Finding a safer lithium battery - enter LiFePo4

Lithium batteries are everywhere from your cell phone and laptop to drills and watches. Not wanting to light my shop on fire, I want to be sure I am not bringing in hazardous materials so i did some digging online and think I found what i was looking for in a sister to the traditional lithium-ion battery, the Lithium Iron Phosphate battery or LiFePo4 battery. I wont bore you with the details you can see them here on Wikipedia but here is the rundown:

Pros:

• longer life cycle 2000-7000 charges

• constant voltage of near 3.2v

• can be chained to make a 12.8v battery which will power many 12v devices

• The use of phosphates avoids cobalt's cost and environmental concerns

• thermal and chemical stability vs lithium-ion, which improves battery safety

Cons:

• Is a newer tech so its a bit more expensive and not as developed

• it has traditionally lower capacity although is still seeing improvement id this area.

• needs balancing and regulation circuit to ensure balanced charge and discharge when chaining up more than one battery.

So I bit the bullet and bought some from my china sources size 14500 batteries to be exact or AA as we know them here is canada.

My next solar project will be with my atv using older tech AGM deep cycle 12v as my ATV doesn't care about weight and my pocket book cant handle the size Ah battery i would need in lithium. Prices are coming down though saw a 10Ah 12v LIFEPO4 for $149 US today , compared to 32 ah AGM deep cycle for $120 at Walmart i will use for the atv project.

well this is my first blog post on this subject. I am by no means an expert but am learning as I go and taking you along for the ride with me. Please feel free to leave comments and don't try what you see me doing at home. Hope you come back for more I am thrilled to getting some of my passion on the subject down on virtual paper. Thanks for reading.

-Brad