simydan:
I'm most glad to start this thread as it is going to be an interesting and practical one...

I got tired of poor power supply by PHCN, coupled with the fact that I live in a house that is not metered and most tenants will fail to pay their power bill on time which eventually leads to the PHCN guys disconnecting our wire.

I have a generator that power's everything in my room including the AC as it's an INVERTER type but, the stress of going out at night to put on/off the Gen or on a raining day plus the cost of buying fuel every now and then made me thought of a backup inverter. If possible an off grid system, just to keep some of my basic appliances powered during outage or disconnect as the case may be.
So, I started my research and since I'm an electrical inclined person and an onliner who knows how to source for stuff's that may not be locally available, and since I needed a good system that no matter how small it would be but will worth it and deliver maximum satisfaction...

It was then I discovered the lithium battery tech and that they are superior to the well known inverter batteries around and then I discovered that they were of different types and more expensive than the traditional inverter batteries. This was where my problems began because I was running on a very tight budget but then I realized that a standard backup power is never cheap even when made with lead acid battery. As if that is not enough, I realized again that the super lithium batteries are not easy to come buy in Nigeria.

It was on this note I deepened my research and discovered that aside from the fact that these batteries have a lot of advantages to the other inverter batteries, like higher depth of discharge (DOD), longer cycle life of 2000-5000, less in weight and volume, higher charging voltage and current which result to faster charging with the term CC/CV ( constant current/constant voltage)...
I also found out that they are of different types and made up of different cells with the

1. Lithium polymer (lipo) being the first with individual cell voltage is 3.7v. These are cells used for cell phones batteries, laptop batteries, power banks and other portable backups and have a cycle life of 500-1000. They are mainly made from the 18650 cells

2. Lithium iron phosphate (lifepo4) with individual cell voltage of 3.2v. These cells are best used for larger battery set up for power backups and are more safer and more expensive to the 18650 3.7v cells, they have cycle life of 2000-5000. Lifepo4 cells are categorized into 32700, 32650, 38120, 40152...

3. Lithium titanate (Lto) with individual cell voltage of 2.3v these are very recent and far more expensive than any of the lithium battery. These cells are very rugged an can charge faster than you can imagine with a cycle life of 15000-25000

After having an in depth understanding of this battery tech I decided to settle for a lifepo4 battery for my inverter set up.
It is also very important to note that, since lifepo4 is not common and does not have the same characteristics as the traditional inverter battery we all know, their charging sequence is quite different as it requires a voltage of about 14.6v CV to charge and does not undergoes float charge like other batteries, with most inverters built in chargers designed with agm and other lead acid in mind it would be hard to charge a lifepo4 battery with these inverters except some inverters with the features to charge a lifepo4.
Proper care needs to be taken in terms of charging this batteries.

Because I'm a ware of this I decided to get a stand alone inverter and a stand alone charger.

This are the list if item I ordered for this project and because I want to keep it simple and cost effective I have to make do with what I can afford.

List of item's:
1. 600W pure sine wave inverter
2. 20a lifepo4 battery charger
3. 12v 100ah lifepo4 battery made from 32650 cells
4. Automatic change over switch (ATS)
5. Breaker's and cables

Since I'm still expecting these items I'll be stopping here and continue when all item's finally arrive then we can move to the next stage...

Hello, I would like to ask if the products has arrived