Need some help with a FreedomWon battery

Batteries
1

We have a FW 20/14 battery. Purchased new in 2019. Installed by the reseller.

We are having some issues with the FW battery - I can see on the VRM (battery connected to Victron inverter with a CCGX) that the cells become very unbalanced at each end of the knees.

As the battery approaches 100% charge cell group 16 goes up to 3.80v ! while the lowest cell is usually around 3.32 / 3.33 etc at the same time - that’s quite a spread.

It is always cell 16 that goes high at the top SoC and always cell 16 that goes low compared to the others as the battery SoC decreases.

The problem is that when the battery approaches 40% SoC cell 16 just collapses and hits 2.6v and the BMS cuts off the supply from the battery.

If we can get a little bit of charge back into the battery we are able to go as low as 10% before close down. I am not sure why that is happening.

So it seems cell 16 (or cell group 16?) has a problem.

I cant find out much about the battery - the local dealer says they are Sinopoly cells and that these cells are no longer made so the only thing they can do is give us some old sinopoly cells they have sitting around to replace cell group 16.

The dealer claims there are 4 cells in parallel so it would be a 16s4p set up. However I cant get that confirmed - the local dealer does not seem that clued up on LFP. Further he claims they are 100Ah cells - but again I cant verify that one way or the other - not getting much out of our local dealer. It would make sense that the cells are arranged as 16s4p with 100Ah cells - it matches the capacity of the battery overall.

After much chasing the local dealer had me connect my laptop to the battery and using Anydesk he remoted in to the BMS and had me drain the battery from 100% to as low as I could manage to get it - we did all that and he extracted some excel files which he claims he was sending to FW for analysis.

This was 3 weeks ago. Heard nothing since. We have been chasing the local dealer but he just tells us he will get back to us. He never does. So this is Freedom Won huh……great service - NOT.

So how do those in SA get on with FW ? Do you have to buy through a dealer or do you go to FW direct?

I am wondering if it is anyuse in contacting FW directly? Will they engage with the end user directly if the local agent is not doing the job? Or will it just be buck passing ?

The situation is this - Zambia is now getting some heavy rain - so the rainy season is starting. My wife is home on the farm alone while I am in CT. The farm is out of town in the bush - she is a women alone on a farm out of town - you know how dangerous that can be in Africa. She relies on the FW battery for security lights at night - we only get grid power for about 3 hours a day at the moment - so the FW battery is the only source of power when the grid goes down…

I am very concerned for her welfare - not having lights at night is a disaster for security - so this is a critical system for us - hence having sunk a LOT of money into a FW battery. The only thing that is comforting to me right now is we do have 5 big Boerboels - so if they try to break in they will get more then they bargained for - but we shouldn’t have to be in this position - we paid good money for a so called brand name battery - but only getting the run around trying to fix the issues this battery is now displaying.

Any ideas on how to get some help from FW on this ? I am about to phone them now but expect that they won’t deal with me directly and will just redirect me to our non performing local agent.

Suggestions greatly welcomed.

Edit - local dealer claims it will take ALL DAY to replace cell 16 or cell group 16 and wants R2000 per hour to work on the battery. So he is after approx R9600 to replace cell 16 with an old used cell. Is this how FW dealers normally do things ?

2

As suspected - FW never actually answers the phone to you - just on an endless que ..waiting..waiting…..waiting for a very long time - its eating all my talk time on the cell phone.

So this a great reason to avoid the brand names and build your own battery. Cant get the local agent to do anything, FW not responsive to end users.

What to do ? The only thing I can do is order cells from China and wait for them to come in (Zambia side) and build out another battery and get rid of this FW pile of cr*p.

The best battery in the world if of little use if it has no service or support behind it.

3

Bad cell. That’s what a bad cell looks like.

My memory might be inaccurate here, but I seem to remember that around that time, BlueNova was using Winston cells, SolarMD was using CALB cells, and one of the others… possibly FW… was using Sinopoly. So it sounds about right.

4

Want to hear a out-of-the-box (what box?) idea?

How big is your ….?

Do that.

Cause if that batt was mine I would have Googled how to open the FW case, how to remove that cell, and startup again with 15 cells, or replace that cell/s.

… whilst waiting for my DIY bank.

Cause I would presume to get that battery replaced under warranty will take a long time and cost a lot ito transport.

Or just buy your new DIY bank in SA and have it the transported to Zambia?

5

Hi Plonkster,

Yes I agree - a bad cell in cell group 16. What I really really dislike about the FW battery is parallel cells - I DO NOT LIKE THIS - i want to see the voltage of every single cell.

The other thing I am not liking is the passive balancer on the OrionJr2 BMS.

On a good note - FW did send me an email - which I answered and …..nothing so far.

I do get its not their emergency but it is for us. Its really the local agent letting us down.

I would have thought that a top tier brand would be supported better than this……not so.

6

Dont want to touch the battery as it is still under warranty - wife went out today to buy a small petrol powered genset - so at least she can have lights at night.

I am expecting the run around from FW.

Somethings I find very disturbing - the BMS is set to let cells go to 3.95v !!! OUCH @!

How on earth could an outfit like FW do that ? Unforgivable. So they have essentially ruined our cells by letting them go so high - I never want my cells above 3.5v - there is little energy in the cells above 3.5v and that 3.5v is high enough for balancing. So now we have had cells getting as high as 3.8v everytime the battery approaches 100% and stay that high when the battery is at 100%.

So while the battery is under warranty our cell life has been badly shortened. Why should we pay R180K for a poorly setup battery ? Cells hitting 3.8v is very bad as most of you here would understand.

The other thing I dont like is running 16s4p. Dont like it one little bit. This battery is inside the house. Going to move it outside as soon as I can. We just dont know what is going on inside those parallel cell groups.

Thing is what do I do about it? I guess we shall see if FW have any decency - someone in thier chain has made a mistake and setup the BMS to allow cells to go as high as 3.95v before shutting down. They should own this problem and replace our cells.

I bet not though. We shall see.

7

The gennie was a great idea!

The warranty … yeah, I get that, hence me asking ‘how big is your …”
Cause way I see it, if they are damaged already and get replaced/repaired, do you trust them to last another couple of years?

Warranty only works once.

Hence my thinking of taking them “out of warranty”.
Call it a FW DIY Battery Project and keep it running for 10+ years with a new BMS and cell’s replaced from another FW battery.

Read about @CZAUTO‘s plight:

8

FreedomWon is generally good with support, they are just very slow. Ive been working with them directly for my eTowers. After complaining about having multiple shipments to their JHB Warehouse at my expense, they sent someone to my house, who then cracked the terminal (of my good battery).

I mean, its good enough for now. But you can see my other thread where I am looking at building my own battery in the future.

They will have my bad battery for a week so far, not heard anything else.

9

That sounds really stressful, especially with your wife relying on the battery for security. It does look like cell group 16 is failing, and replacing it with old used cells isn’t ideal. I’d strongly suggest contacting Freedom Won directly, explain the urgency and safety risk. Also, document everything and, if possible, get a temporary backup for essential loads until it’s fixed.

10

Very few battery makers use anything other than passive balancing. It’s honestly just fine for this application.

I will answer more a bit later.

11

On an other thread on this forum, I posted this a while back … it still holds true.

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In the beginning the cells are perfectly top balanced, most manufacturers are happy.

But after a few years, especially with normal home user use cases as well a couple of winters, the cells are not so much in balance anymore hence the need arises for a better balancer.

One thing I’ve realised … if you’ve spend 10’s of thousands on your own DIY battery with no mentionable warranty, trust me when I say, one tends to focus a whole lot more on details than someone with a sealed unit under a 10 year warranty.

On top of that one tend to upgrade ones BMS - done it 4 times now.

12

It’s a balancing game. Many battery makers (BYD is another one) will let you go to 3.75V without intervening, and disconnect only at 3.85V. Sure, it’s not good for longevity to constantly hold the cells that high, but it is also not the massive disaster we’re sometimes made to think. An LFP cell is fine up to 4.2V, at least to my knowledge. The reason you don’t want to intervene too soon, is that causes outages.

With that said however, I have never seen my 15/12 allow cells to go that high. It lowers the charge voltage whenever a cell comes within a hint of 3.55V, sometimes quite abruptly too.

I still don’t think this is actually true. When you get to the point that one cell is CONSTANTLY getting out of balance with the rest, to the extent that a simple bi-weekly charge to 100% no longer resolves it… you have bigger problems. An active balancer will buy you time, at best.

The Orion Jr BMS has 150mA bypass current capacity. That’s actually ample. Some passive balancers have as much as 2A bypass capacity, which really is sufficient. An active balancer is nice, but it adds complexity and cost as well.

13

So had a read of that E-tower thread - WOW !! so looks like I am in for a rough ride.

Issue first logged with the country agent 3 weeks ago - chased him up on Monday - just wants to change out faulty cells for old used cells - wants R2000 per hour to do this + travel time to come collect the battery and take it to his workshop - then has quoted 1 day of work to swap cells out (so R16000) then says it will be up to 4 days to balance the cells. Then we have to pay for transporting the battery back to home and then have to pay to have it reconnected to everything (batteries and inverter etc) because if they dont do it there is no further warranty.

WOW - just wow. FW seems to be a rort !

Its only been 3 weeks (hang on, did I just say it’s ONLY been 3 weeks?) but can already see there is no sense of urgency on this from anyone in the chain.

From reading the other thread about FW I can see that FW have gone to the dogs - how on earth can a tech insist swollen cells are fine and that they are sending the battery back with swollen cells !!

YIKES!!! did FW really suggest that ? How can FW be taken seriously any further ?

Can you imagine that if I were a small independant battery builder and I did that to a client how big the outcry would be. If it were posted on forums that I did that to a client I would be poo-pooed from here to Timbuktu and back - yet FW do it and most are …MEH…..move on. Why are we cutting FW so much slack on this ? This should be shouted from the rooftop - FW are going rogue !! DO NOT TRUST FREEDOM WON.

So let me get this right……a Tier One Top Brand Name battery maker in SA was bringing in cheap Chinese batteries and were putting BIG markups on them under THEIR brand name in the market and yet they were nothing more then Chinese made and assembled batteries. And they got the name Freedom Won on them ? WOW……just wow wow wow. How could I EVER trust Freedom Won again ?

So anyways, back to my problem. So they (FW) have setup the BMS to allow cells to hit 3.95v - while technically this is allowed in terms of the cell not catching fire it destroys the long term health of the cells. The country agent claims the cells used in the 20/14 purchased in 2019 are no longer available and he wants to give us some “old” cells he has from another battery they they scrapped (no idea why they scrapped another 20/14 battery).

Would anyone here accept that deal (and remembers he wants R2000 per hour to do this).

If new cells are not available then I will be pushing for a replacement battery.

If I can get a replacement battery I wont even install it - just sell it and get rid of FW in my life.

You are far better off building your own battery for 1/3 the price and carry the warranty yourself.

Thoughts ?

14

Goes back to my suggestion up top … make that batt into a Freedom DIY yourself if that is what is on offer, after getting replacement cells.

Cause using replaced cells in existing bank … there is a reason for Batched Matched cells.
Their internal resistance is very close to each other.
Otherwise you need a stronger balancer, which having a DIY bank, you could do, for as I say, chances are the replaced cells could be a tough one to keep in balance, or wise versa.

Go for that methinks - get your DIY bank in place.
Cause as I said, one warranty replacement.
So the question each one must ask themselves … how long will that warranty battery replacement last?

15

But that is what that screenshot said Plonk?
By the time the problem becomes really obvious, it is time for cell/s replacement, it is over and done.

See, the problem starts years before that, bit by bit and 99.999% of the time it is missed till it is too late.

What I also look at:
To save cost on a BMS, say BMS is <±R5k the cells ±R50k value, how does that make any sense?
These cells are supposed to last 15-25 years when treated properly.
Why cut corners with the BMS balancer, it being a rather big thing over the lifetime of the cells?

Also remember, the BMS’s from 2019 and the BMS from 2025, new models constantly fix problems found in older models … Andy and his key followers did a lot of effort there with the JK BMS ranges to get their firmware upgraded, as a case point.

16

Yup, and I doubt an active balancer is going to prevent that. If the battery is fully charged periodically, as you are supposed to, passive balancers do just fine. At least, almost the entire market seems to think so :slight_smile: I think I know of maybe one commercial battery that has active balancing… and South Africans don’t buy it as it costs a premium.

17

:slight_smile: - I did not advocate for active nor passive balancers.

I promote the idea of the right BMS that has firmware upgrades to resolve issues discovered over time.

That one can upgrade BMS’es as new model come out.

Also key, the cells. Batched matched A-Grade.

One would assume that all major suppliers, at their prices, with their warranties, that all will have top rated cells with BMS’es that are “fit-for-purpose” for the life cycle of the cells?

Not cut corners.

Maybe some of these large manufacturers should go for a tour at Victron HO and see how it can be done.

Any case, seems a ±R2 000JK BMS has more functionality and reliability than some of the brand names have in their batteries - and that is with a 2A Active Balancer nogal, premium costs I tell ya.

1 Like
18

I think you are dead right.

19

Soooooooo. Any scrap eTowers for sale? I know the eTowers and Pace BMS’s like the palm of my hand now. I’ve got a balancing charger, diagnostic cables, software, etc. so I’m not scared of opening them up anymore. I’ve decided to forget about FW’s warranty. I’ve seen their “warranty” and don’t think I would want them touching my batteries again.

There was onother one sold on FB marketplace for R7k about two weeks ago. It was sold almost immediately so I missed out on it. I would gladly pay R6k - R8k for old eTowers. I’ve got 4 of them working flawlessly now, balanced below 10mV. I use my own settings though, based on Andy’s from Offgrid garage’s settings for the Pace BMS. Capacity has gone up since using my own settings. I don’t think it’s a bad battery, i think they use bad settings, if changing any settings from the factory Pace settings at all.

Since Electromechanica acquired 50% from Lizette and Anthony aftersales support has declined dramatically. It proves it again. Big companies only worry about your money. You’re only a number and in this case a ticket number. If you need after sales support, get a ticket and wait in line. First they do is log in and tinker with the battery settings. Like they changed my cell OV detection time to 50,000 seconds. Holy shit that’s almost 14 hours fir the BMS to detect that a cell is in over voltage state. It solves the alarm problem because in 14 hours time you most definitely would have drained the battery and by the time of being charged again you’ve got another 14 hours , and so the cycle continues…… No alarms…… BUT……

No thanks. i’ll monitor and maintain my batteries myself and I will most definitely buy mors “scrap” or used eTowers if the price is right. New?? No thanks!!

1 Like
20

Yes this seems to be what it is. I am very disappointed in FW - I would never buy another nor recommend one to anyone.

The way I have seen our battery setup has been an eye opener - I couldn’t believe that they allow cells to go to 3.95v !

Like you after we are done with a warranty claim, if I still have a FW battery (if i get a replacement i will just sell it and be free of FW) I will open it up and change things around a bit and carry my own warranty - just like you I feel we can look after our battery better than they can - they seem to have made some very questionable choices in the settings of the BMS. At the end of day it is our battery cells that have lost life by being held at 3.80v for extended periods - no matter what their excuse is for doing this.

After reading your thread here I now realise what i am in for and that there will be no swift resolution of the problems without battery. To wit, nothing heard today from anyone - its now almost 4 weeks with the local agent and day 3 for direct communications with FW. So far nothing from anyone - but now I understand just how bad things are with them I know it most likely won’t be looked at this year as Xmas is nearly on us.

A Freedom Won battery - never again.