Description

Winston (formerly Thunder Sky / Thundersky) is one of the largest manufacturers of lithium batteries in the world. The chemistry of these cells is Lithium Iron Phosphate (LiFePO4) or LFP. The main advantage of LFP batteries is that they do not have the volatile thermal issues that Li-ion batteries have, making LFP batteries much safer than Li-ion. The other advantage is that they have very high cycle life of up to 2000 cycles, compared with Sealed Lead Acid (SLA) batteries that have a cycle life of about 400 cycles. This means that LFP cells can last 5 times longer than SLA batteries. The price of lithium batteries keeps coming down and the price of lead batteries keeps going up. Hopefully lithium batteries will eventually become equal in price or even cheaper than SLA batteries. If you factor in the cycle life of LFP batteries it can be argued that LFP batteries are already cheaper per use than SLA batteries.

We have been experimenting with these cells for over a year in several real life EV applications such as Electric Motorcycles, Electric Quads and Electric Scooters. The capacity and discharge characteristics have met our expectations. The manufacturer’s claim of a battery life of 2000 cycles is only realistic with a proper Battery Management System (BMS). A proper BMS is one that has over- and under-voltage protection. Proper operating range of these cells is 2.5-4.2 volts. Operating the cells outside of this voltage range may damage the cells or lower their cycle life.

These cells are rebranded by Voltronix and are picked to be among the highest quality LiFePo4 cells manufactured by Winston.

Specifications

Nominal Voltage: 3.2V
Nominal Capacity: 180AH
Operating Voltage: 2.5V ~ 4.25V
Operating Temp Charging: -18°C to (+) 75°C
Operating Temp Discharging: -30°C to (+) 75°C
Cycle Life (80%DOD): 2000
Cycle Life (70%DOD): 3000

Downloads
Instruction Manual