AOLITHIUM 51.2v 100ah Server Rack Lithium LiFePO4 Battery Review | with EG4 6500 6000xp

so this right here is a 48 volt lithium iron phosphate Servo rack battery from AOL lithium all right and the reason we have these is because they were really good deal right around Black Friday of 2023 and because there were such a good deal we said hey we should go and pick them up okay and it's kind of why we're doing a review of this video or this battery today mainly because there aren't any uh or a lot of good reviews on these uh batteries which is why we're having this video today so before you go ahead and say oh you guys got all these special discounts and stuff like that that is not true uh if you go and just Google around looking for them stuff like that you'll find out these batteries are going for uh to the general public for ,000 right on black Frid of 2023 and we did not contact them they did not contact us we have no relation to them them we just found came across on the website and said hey that's a good deal we should go buy them okay and if you calculate kilowatt hours or how much it cost for a kilowatt hour it's a great deal which is kind of why we picked up a couple of these uh to add to our system okay so if you're interested in figuring out if these are good or not or if you really just want to know more about these stick with us all right so this right here here is obviously the AOL lithium 51. 2 server rack battery let's go over some of the quick specs okay so I'm just only going to go over the parts I think are really important that you really need to know and all the stuff that isn't too obvious okay first of all uh when you buy this battery you can buy in different configuration and you can figure that out on the website you can buy like two or three sets or whatnot it'll come with parallel cables and uh longer charge and discharge cable and stuff like that but the way I would recommend you buy it and which is the way I bought it even if you have to create multiple orders to get it this way is you get a single battery with the ful length charge and discharge cable for uh each battery so instead of buying a set of four with one set of charge and discharge cables and all bunch of parallel cables I would say just buy single or or four single units okay because when you buy the single units this is what you get okay uh when you buy the single units what you will get is a bag and inside the bag there will be a lot of uh cables and stuff so inside of each bag when you buy one of these uh there are plus charge and discharge cables which look exactly like this obviously the black one is for negative and this uh orange one is for positive and uh this is a Communications cable and you also get two tiny uh parallel cables okay I don't know where I put them maybe I'm using them or something but the point is if you buy uh four batteries this way you will get four sets of these cables right if you buy buy six individual sets you get six sets of these cables and the reason why I would recommend you do that instead of buying a kit of six which only gives you one set of these cables is mainly because the way you primarily connect to this battery is um these connectors here okay and this is going to be what I would call probably the biggest downside to this battery okay so if you look at this connector it's probably some kind of connector you probably have never seen before U mainly because this I believe believe is what you call a fsp 6. 0 connector and this uh fsp 6. 0 connector I think spec-wise is rated for 125 amps continuous and although this connection may be waterproof uh I don't think that really matters or counts in this case because even if this connection here is waterproof this battery is not waterproof so there's really no point in this connection being uh waterproof because it just doesn't make that much sense even if you have it in a marine environment or whatnot uh and you're worried about you know the water getting in between the connection you're going to have a much bigger problem with water getting in between these cracks here than these connections now I'm going to go ahead and say that's probably the biggest downside to this system okay so uh if you go ahead and open this up what you'll find out is that uh these two are pretty much connected in uh parallel so whichever way you want to configure you know if you want to connect this uh positive stop or positive cable to this right and you got to push it in until it clicks and when it clicks it means it's locked in once it's locked in there is a little bit of movement for it to index and turn and there is a positive uh indexing location as you can see here if I put it here it'll stay there uh same with the negative and you can connect them in either way you can put this here and make this work in that way uh if you needed to um but like I said the mo the biggest downside is mainly those two being um what I would call the fxp 6.

0 connectors and the reason I'm saying that is mainly because this is kind of like a uncommon or uh what do you call it uh it's it's not a very common connector you're going to go to your part store and just pick it up okay even if they put speakon or Tron connectors in there uh that wouldn't also be that common but you would much rather prefer those speakon or infano connectors or whatever that you put on there mainly because you can pick them up at Parts Express or any general place you can get those connectors but these connectors I believe and I could be wrong on this is that you can only find these connectors in China okay so that doesn't help the people that are not located on Mainland China or anywhere near China because uh I tried to find a way to order these connectors and you just can't get them okay um and the real reason you need to do that is because these cables that it comes with are three gauge cables that's three AWG in case you weren't sure what that meant uh cables and these cables may be I forgot what they're rated for or maybe around 125 amps or something like that or maybe less but um if you want to connect let's say two or three of these um if you want to pull maximum out of that let's say you connect the two of these in parallel when you pull 200 amps out of that these cables are not going to be raided to do that okay so even if you connect a bunch of them in parallel you can't really get the power out of it using these connectors and and that's kind of why I'm saying you really should order each one of these batteries with the full length set of these mainly because the way we're going to work around that and I'll show you how to do that later okay and it'll become really important on why you should do that so another thing I will go ahead and tell you is uh if you did want to fix this problem or mediate this problem which I think not too many people are going to want to do mainly because you want it plug and play and you want it like a commodity is that you can probably take this off and then you could uh uh replace these connections with all infol connectors in case you wanted to do that but or like lug connector lugs if you wanted to do that too but that's a lot of work and I found a way to just work around it without having to do that but it is possible to do that if you are willing to do the work okay so with that being said let me go ahead and talk about the other important parts of the battery so this battery right now is not on which means there's no voltage to these okay as soon as you hit this on the BMS will come on okay and as the BMS powers on goes through its cycle goes through its charge uh resistor and that charge up state or pre-charge state it will go ahead and do all of that and as it's running this run light will be on also this has a really nice BMS system and this BMS system also has the LED to it and this led has all kinds of menus and things you can connect to uh that go ahead and tell you you know pretty much uh you know your battery voltage your battery status the all kinds of version numbers of the BMS and all that kind of stuff so pretty much the same battery BMS system that's on a lot of higher end server rack batteries so this is nice also because this BMS system will also tell you how much is going into the battery or how much is coming out of the battery in amps okay so that is really nice feature to have especially at a battery price point of less than $1,000 for a 5 KW hour pack okay so uh enough on that but with that being said it's got four state of charge indicators pretty standard it's got an alarm just in case you run to a fault it's got this run light and it's got six dip switches and it's also got these dry contacts here it's got can uh can bus and 485 bus and all these connectors in case you wanted to connect a bunch of these and use it I'm going to go ahead and tell you I was unsuccessful in getting uh Communications working between this and the 6500 uh uh eg4 6500 ex um I do believe on the forums I've seen people say that they were able to get this battery or a sets of these batteries connected to um like the 6,000 XP or was it the 18K or whatnot by playing with dip switch number five and putting this switch number five up and then setting the uh inverter to uh lithium lithium zero whatnot to make that work I personally did not do that but I'm just telling you what we read on the form all right so before we go ahead and put this back into the system let's go ahead and talk about uh the way that this uh battery connection thing works just again real quick okay first of all the uh this battery will support 100 continuous amps output but it will not support 100 continu amps input the maximum um continuous charge current for this battery is 50 amps so make sure you keep that in mind if you're designing system mainly because that's what happens all right so also uh when you buy this uh battery it will come in this really nice box it's kind of like a Basswood type box um and the bo box is reinforced this way and I would say out of all the batteries that we've bought ever this is this is probably the best shipping system that they kind of come up with cuz they they pretty much put as many of these batteries they can fit on a crate uh are in these boxes and they put that on a pallet okay so uh there's no way these batteries I think are going to be damaged especially since this is like Basswood plywood and these Corners are reinforced with staples and then you got to take it off to get it in as you may have seen as you're opening the video okay so let's go ahead and tell you uh I'll talk to you a little bit about the system that I'm using this in um and then we'll go ahead and go take a look at system so the system I currently have or that's in use right now um is going to be the 6000 XP system with eg4 batteries which have communication set up to them okay and um this system what I pretty much have is this uh set of these batteries just uh supplementing power into the battery bank and the way we have that is by connecting two of the batteries in parallel using parallel cables and then using uh one of one set of full discharge and charge cables out of each battery and connecting to a battery bus which connects all the batteries together so theoretically speaking yes I will not technically exceed the maximum charge and discharge current of the cables mainly because I know what the system is going going to be possible to draw at a Max uh but that's the way I've kind of have the system working mainly because you know just everything's always up in flux here so um the rain reason I'm also telling you about these cables is because I think the best way to use these batteries uh is not the way I'm using it but it's also pretty much the way of get uh each one of these and then hook the end of the of these lugs into a bus bar of every single battery you have okay and then if you hook all of those to the to a bus bar in every single battery you have then pretty much every single battery will be able to operate in a way technically independently than every other battery because they're not going to be connected by parallel using these lugs but they will be connected in parallel using uh one set of of Terminals and cables I'm hoping that makes sense okay mainly because that way you will be able to get the maximum input and discharge from this battery without technically causing a fire with this because this cable is only rated for about 125 amps Max I think um and just in case you missed it I think the connector name is fsp 6. 0 and I just don't want to deal the work of replacing all of these connectors to make that happen because that just kind of degrades the value I'm getting from these batteries by having them just plug in play and making that work okay so in my case like I said I put two in parallel and then put one discharge current mainly because I don't want a ton of cables everywhere but you know that's what it is okay and I do not have uh communication set up with this and uh the eg4 batteries because the eg4 batteries are kind of Clos Loop to themselves and these are kind of Clos Loop in a way to themselves and you can't really connect both of those like that but if it had another let's say 6,000 XP you could probably connect all of these to that 6,000 XP but but that's not the case so with that being said let's go take a look at the system all right so for the last few months um that battery that we were just looking at was connected right here in this spot okay um so I technically right now have four of these batteries um and the way that they're configured as I was just talking to you about and we've been using it pretty well like this for the last 6 months and had no issue um earlier I think I don't know if I said 6500 or 6,000 XP but earlier the system I used to have is a single 6500 that was set up here and that one worked really well and just you know going on a off Trail here uh that one had no issues I had no issues with that my only problem with that was I needed two of those units to get 240 and I really wanted to get 240 without having two units so I took that system out and now we're only using the 6,000 XP system okay so I did want to go ahead and say this s these batteries work really well with the 6500 ex also but I'm going to go ahead and mainly only talk about the 6,000 XP okay so like I mentioned to you earlier the way I have it set up up right now is I have two of these batteries pretty much acting as one unit by connecting the batteries in parallel here using the parallel cables that you get like this right and then connecting the charge and discharge cables right here coming out of here and kind of going into this uh linkx Power in from victron okay so the way you look at it here I probably should run better cable management is that if you look at it this way uh these uh this cable right here is my stack of uh eg4 life power 4 batteries and each one of these is pretty much one set of these okay so I have you know two cables coming in here from this battery and then I have this cables coming in here from pretty much here okay so that way I can kind of theoretically I can add more you can always add you know almost an infinite amount as you add more and more of these units but the way I have it set up I just was trying to figure out if it works or not and that's kind of the way it works okay so the way I have these laid out is facing upwards and I do kind of have them secure to each other to act as one big so you know one does doesn't just tip over is by using just these uh rack ears and just mounting all the screws to the rack ears okay so the larger obviously the larger this is the more difficult is going to be for the entire unit to flip over or tip over or any one of them to fall over right um so that's just something uh we just hacked up here I'm not sure if I covered it but also these rack ears that are on the batteries are actually well to the battery casing out of the box okay um so it's not like screws that you have to put in with the life power 4 batteries or anything like that they're actually welded in place so this entire setup seems really secure okay so uh with that being said let's go ahead and tell you how this system works right now and like I said all the batteries come in there they all come out of here and then let me turn the camera around just a little bit and you will see they come out of um the links power in and and then kind of move up to this uh 6000 XP into this power distribution box okay and this is a off-grid 6000 XP system and it can run 240 and it does run 240 and runs the mini split really well but the way I've kind of supplemented power um or getting these to work in Junction with the life power four battery stack I have is by using that victron power in unit right there and that's a really nice unit okay I do want to go ahead and shout out to victron for making that unit no they did not sponsor this I'm just want to point out that's a really nice unit so if you wanted to buy or use these systems or these batteries with the system that you kind of already have in place I would highly recommend doing it this way um in order to maximize like I said the power going in and out of the batteries you probably want to connect each one of these batteries independently to the uh uh victron links power end but I've connected two of them to a single one because like I said I know the capacity of the system okay so with that being said I I am going to go ahead talk about a little bit of current sharing issues but you're definitely going to have to take that with the gr ass salt Manu because of the way the system is designed but I will go ahead and tell you just by looking at the latest power settings um from here let's see if I can bring you in closer and take a look at it you'll see that um by looking at this power settings you'll see right here this is at 77% this one here is at 78% and this one here not sure if you can see it very well is at 59% and they're all connected technically parallel here but they're all taking like different uh you know uh what you call resistance routes to the batteries okay so these two actually are almost always in sync or very close to being in sync like I said 78 77 but this one uh it's 59 may it may be because I don't have the second battery here but uh but what I've noticed even with that second battery here is that these two units will not always be very close one will be let I'm just making up numbers here like 60 and other one will be like 80 something um it may be because they need more cycling but like I said I've had the batteries for over a couple weeks and maybe a few months and they've been cycling all this time but uh it may also just be to the way of the current sharing issues designed with the power uh cables to the system all right so that's pretty much the ends and outs of this battery I'm going to go ahead and get this battery reconnected back up to the old system uh after I get it charged up to pretty much the same state of charge but the point is these batteries right now in last uh two two to three months that I've had them and used them and cycled them pretty much almost every day have been really good haven't had any issues so far so technically speaking I think they say uh these batteries are warrantied for about 15 years um I'm not sure how long this AOL Lithium company is going to be around to be able to Warrant this kind of stuff or whatnot but a battery that's technically warrantied for 15 years using what it like 16 of the Best in Class Eve cells and stuff like that they have a really nice casing this casing is solid welded uh ear racks the way they ship it everything of this battery just screams high class or high quality right the only downside I really do not like with the system is these connectors okay um the cables that it comes with are okay I think the qualities of the cables kind of remind me of um was it uh EV or hybrid cables you know cuz I've worked on uh a Prius and also Nissan Leaf and they look almost and look and feel almost exactly like these cables and even on the cable what even says EV so I'm not sure if that's the type of cable they're using but I do think the cables the quality the connection mechanism I would say is it's okay if you're just looking for one battery to Plug and Play that's that's great but I'd say that could definitely use an overhaul other than that like I said this is it seems to be high quality battery have had it so far no issues if we do run into any type of issue we'll go ahead and post it on channel and see if you can come up if you know you guys care about that kind of stuff but would I recommend buying this battery let's go and talk talk about that so like I said I bought all of these batteries but we bought them at a price of under $1,000 each okay would I go ahead and buy these batteries again for under $1,000 definitely yes without a question if they want on sale for anywhere close to $1,000 I would go pick them up in a heartbeat okay mainly because even the cheapest server Rack or let's just say the cheapest mainstream brand with quality I would say some level of quality right knowing what you would expect of s rack batteries I think right now technically are the eg4 life power fors okay no they do not sponsor this video we're not related to them anyway either um and I think they generally go for around 13 to 1,400 bucks or somewhere around that that that uh price range um and they don't even come with I think connectors okay so this actually comes with this but the point I'm saying is that this is way less couple hundred less than that so I'll definitely pick these up the only downside like I mentioned is the connectors okay okay so would I go out and buy it again at full retail price and I think full retail price is somewhere around $2,000 I'm going to go ahead and say definitely not mainly because for a lot couple hundred less per battery you can get life power four batteries okay or any other type of server rack batteries even like the S so batteries or the trophy rack batteries they're going to be less than a thousand or less than $2,000 right so for retail price I will not buy these again but for sale price will definitely buy them again so hopefully this video helped you guys if any question let us know otherwise have a great day and I'll see you guys next time