[Music]
hi folks Dave here today I have on my
workbench the watt cycle 12 volts 300 a
mini battery now just to be clear watt
cycle sent this battery to me for a
review I did not pay for it it looks
pretty large but for a 300 aamp battery
it looks a bit on the small side and
indeed it is smaller than you would
expect and that's why they're calling it
a mini battery so what I'm going to do
is put this battery through its Paces
I'm going to put it on my other
workbench and I'm I'm going to attach it
to a dedicated charge controller and
solar panels and really put this battery
through its paces and see what it can do
the only way to determine if it really
has 300 ampir in it is to do a real test
a deep cycle now this type of battery
has its own integrated BMS and it's a
virtually plug-and-play part of an off
electrical grid solar power system this
battery has over 3 kwatt hours of
storage in it let's take a look at the
label there's the model number 3.8 KW
hours 3.84 k hours so you could say it
has 3 to 3 and 1 12 Kow hours in it with
a reserve let's take a look at the watt
cycle website they have a whole line of
12vt batteries and as you can see the
12vt 300 a mini is their new product
they also have various other sizes as
well now let's take a look at the 200 a
battery you can see this is the 200 a
version and it's 21x 8.2x 8.5 in this
particular one is not listed as a mini
size it has a 200 amp BMS but just note
the size 21 by 8.2x 8 .5 in and 45.2 lb
we go to shop 12vt batteries and 300 amp
mini it says it's nearly 12 lbs lighter
than a three pack of 12vt 100 amps 42%
smaller than a three pack of 12v 100 a
batteries and I believe that because
I've had two of the watt cycle 12v 100
aamp batteries on my bench before anyway
it's 15.12 x 7.64 x 10.4 in and 5732 lb
now interestingly if we take the
dimensions of the battery and Cube
them you get a number like this 1,159
cubic in if I take the 200 a battery and
I had 1/3 to it it would be 1,951 cubic
in but this 300 aamp battery is 1,159
cubic in so I'm just doing some rough
numbers to see um what is the size
comparison it's a little bit hard to do
that when the battery's on the workbench
to get an idea you can tell it's small
but it's hard to tell how much smaller
now I'm using their 200 a battery as a
comparison because a 300 a battery you
would think would be 1/3
bigger so in this case it's not because
it's a mini battery it is a compact form
factor they've crammed more power into a
smaller box anyway let's calculate the
percentage based on a 1/3 bigger 200
aamp battery uh non- Min size and I'm
coming up with about 41% or something
like that let's just say 40% so really
that's quite impressive and these are
just rough numbers so clearly there's
more power storage in this battery this
300 ire mini but the size hasn't grown
to what I would expect it stayed rather
small and I find that pretty interesting
other interesting specifications is that
it uses Automotive gr a life po 4 cells
I don't tend to rip the battery open to
see what's in it I'm just going to test
it from a customer standpoint either it
works or it doesn't 200 amp BMS ip65
waterproof rating that's good anyway it
is allowed to put them in four Series so
that means 40 volt or up to four in
parallel that's quite a beefy system now
here's an interesting size comparison
they have the 300 aamp Mini battery
compared to a 12v 300 a AGM and other
12vt 300 aamp
batteries and it's amazing uh with
especially with lead acid this type of
battery would compare extremely
favorably to lead acid AGM batteries AGM
batteries are okay but of course they
can perform on the level of a lithium
iron phosphate battery and there's a
picture looks like they have the
aluminum Inc cells that are in a
vertical position able to be charged as
long as it's above freezing and it can
discharge down to -4° F I would
certainly try to keep my batteries
warmer than that but some people do have
to put their batteries outdoors and so
you have to be careful if you're going
to have the battery in a cold location
now they're claiming a 10-year lifespan
and uh that's not a problem with lithium
iron phosphate as long as you take very
good care of them here they say 15,000
Cycles or more and that's 60% depth of
this chart if you don't run it flat dead
every single cycle you could certainly
expect 15,000 Cycles I agree that that's
very reasonable expectation you might
even get more but that all depends on
how you treat them okay that concludes
this quick look at wat Cycles
specifications on their website let's
take a look at the bench test and go
ahead and finish that up and see how
this battery performs all right I got
the battery moved over to the other
workbench it was quite an effort it's
pretty heavy but you would expect for
300 amp hours that there would be
significant weight increase and I'm
going to wire in a charge controller
that's available patch in my solar
panels and give this thing a complete
full charge then it will bring over one
of my inverters it's the same as that
one right there and I will charge this
battery up run that inverter and do a
complete deep cycle test to see what it
can do here's some of my test gear so I
need to get all this out and connect it
to the battery and the charge controller
and set up the test so I'll go ahead and
do that now and I'll be right back okay
I've got my Mak sky blue charge
controller connected to the battery
right there it's tapped into my solar
panels outside the workshop I'll include
some footage of those solar
panels there's the battery charging up
I've got a 150 amp ANL fuse coolum
counting amp meter 22 amps going in I'm
waiting for that to charge up 300
W this is an amp nvt inverter 1200 w low
frequency piure sine wave inverter and
I'm going to use this to run the test
load I'm going to do a full charge on
this battery and make sure it's 100%
full and then I'm going to turn off the
charger and turn the inverter on and
we'll run the test load so the battery
is now charging and I will just let it
sit there until it's 100% charged and
then I will come back to start the
discharge test it's going to be a deep
cycle test to see how much power is
actually in this battery hopefully 300
amp hour just like it says just a note
about the charge rate it's charging at
about 47 amps so it's going to take a
good while to fill this battery up as
it's 300 amp hours all right this
battery has been completely and fully
charged it doesn't have any charge
controller connected I've disconnected
the charge controller completely and now
it's just the inverter and this battery
and I have my meter here to keep track
of what's going on let's go ahead and
start up the
inverter okay the inverter starting up
I've run an extension cord all the way
from this inverter over here to I'll
show you where that's going
over here I've got my little tiny 500 w
space heater it's too cold to run air
conditioning so I'm going to go ahead
and transition to a space heater and
this thing will allow me to put either a
300 or 500 W load on my inverter and on
the battery I'll just set it to 500 WTS
and we'll see what happens okay there's
my heater it's on it's plugged into the
inverter and it's just now getting
warmed up this is not a heater that
modified runoff of DC and like some of
my videos this is just a plain AC space
heater and it's pulling about 500 WTS
let's go take a look at the battery and
see what that's
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doing okay so we're doing about 37% load
on this inverter 120
volts and according to the battery
monitor we're pushing 42 amps at 566
watt so the next step is to Simply let
this test run to completion and what I
want to see is 300 amps in the battery
maybe it has a little more maybe it has
a little less who knows
when you buy a battery that's 300 amp
200 amp or whatever it is you want to
make sure it actually has that in it and
this kind of test is the way to see what
their true capacity is okay here's the
status of the test 13.1 volts it hasn't
been running that long 570 wat 6 hours
and 20 minutes is what is
estimated and this number here can
change it depends so 6 hours and 19 or
20 minutes 275 amp hour so 25 amp hour
has already been consumed and it's
holding about 13.1 volts which is pretty
normal all right here's a little midterm
update here actually it's past the
halfway point 36% according to the
calculations on this amp meter 12.9 Volt
or 12.89 volts and it should have about
100 amp hour left depending on the
capacity the actual capacity the heater
has raised the temperature in this shop
significantly it's quite a large space
to heat definitely made a difference in
here it's amazing that heater has been
running off that battery still has not
run it down okay here's the end of the
test the battery just barely has 300 amp
hour in it so I'm going to go ahead and
shut off my inverter and I don't like
running these lithium iron phosphate
batteries down flat dead but I had to do
that on this one in order to get the
rated capacity and it had a little bit
more power in it but I'm not willing to
run it that hard just to get another
half an amp hour or another 1 amp hour
out of it I don't see the point anyway
the battery pretty much has the capacity
printed on the label and I don't need to
test that again because uh it requires
running it down to almost dead it's
recovering now was down a little bit
below 11 volts okay so how long did it
run the heater the answer is it ran that
heater for over 6 and 1/2 hours straight
it heated the room up in here a little
bit too much but I let the test keep
running because I needed to finish it
according to my amp meter the heater was
consuming 575 Watts but that's not the
whole story this inverter is wasting
about 20% of the power that having been
said with a space heater attached to an
inverter like this if the inverter is
located in the same room that you're
heating you still win because that 575
watts is coming from the battery and
it's still going to manifest his heat
because the power this inverter wastes
will manifest as heat and the rest of
the heat will be put out by the space
heater may seem kind of strange but
about 20% of the heat that I got in my
building today came from this inverter
and that's why inverters you know they
they waste power if you're trying to
make heat I guess it's okay it's not
very efficient though so it makes more
sense to use a 12vs DC heater instead
it's more efficient or you could use a
direct PV DC powered space heater
running straight off the solar panels
and that would be the most efficient
because you wouldn't have to cycle a
battery and you wouldn't need an
inverter and I've built several of those
heaters I have about a dozen of them if
you want to see how to build one the
links are in the description so here's
what I think after several days testing
this watt cycle 300 a mini battery
remember I don't get paid commissions
for sales of this battery my wish is to
test it and inform you of my personal
opinions and experience simply put this
battery met my expectations of a modern
deep cycle lithium iron phosphate
battery it uses the latest technology
and manages to cram more capacity into a
smaller space based on its perform
performance over the past few days I can
recommend it a long-term durability test
is now in progress but that will take
time if you wish to purchase this
battery there are links and discount
information in the description thanks to
wat cycle for providing a sample battery
for this test and thanks for watching my
review I hope to see you next time all
related video and playlist links are
posted in the description down below
thanks for watching and hope to see you
next time