Has anyone taken the plunge or have any experience with ordering Chinese battery storage systems? 

 

I was looking at something like this.  Looks very similar to the pylontech US range. 5kw is around £1100 and 10kw around £2100, so not far off half the price. 

Haven’t bought any batteries from China but US has been having a lot of their stuff built in China anyway. It’s now biting the US companies in the butt because they are losing a lot of business as the Chinese companies are selling direct especially in UK.

Be interested how that works out for you. I know from bulk buying 18650 batteries from AliExpress years ago it was awash with cheap cells salvaged from old laptop battery packs, re-badged and sold on. I imagine it's even easier to include refurbs and seconds in a rack mount pack like this.

Environmentally this might be exactly what we should be doing with old cells, at these prices you can 50% oversize if needed and still save money. It'd just be sure exactly what you're getting before putting down cash on it. 

If I was buying battery kit from China I'd stick to lithium iron phosphate (LiFePO4 AKA LFP) batteries as they are significantly safer than regular lithium ion (NMC, NCA). The economics tend to drive the manufacturers more than safety factors and LFP's are more forgiving to design for.

1 hour ago, Radian said:

If I was buying battery kit from China I'd stick to lithium iron phosphate (LiFePO4 AKA LFP) batteries as they are significantly safer than regular lithium ion (NMC, NCA). The economics tend to drive the manufacturers more than safety factors and LFP's are more forgiving to design for.

Thanks, the ones linked are LFP. 

 

I would probably build a small enclosure with hardie backer boards or something to be safe anyway.