The Busbar

Ben Stein published the first independent bench test we have seen of a semi-solid-state marine pack on 8 September, using Safiery's 48V 53.1Ah units — the pack we listed in August when its pricing could not be confirmed. Now it can: $1,642 for the 2C model (5,000W discharge) and $1,711 for the 3C (7,500W, 10,000-cycle claim), both 2,712Wh.

The power delivery is real. Stein ran it from 100% to 0% at 150A and it took 20 minutes, with cell temperature rising from 30°C to 62°C. He reads that as a racing-sailboat or hydraulics use case rather than a house bank, and the sustained figures support him: held under a 55°C ceiling, continuous cycling settled at 22A charging and 34A discharging — 0.42C and 0.64C. A pack that does 3C in bursts does not do 3C all afternoon.

The number that should give a boat owner pause is the idle one. Stein measured 157mA of self-discharge, which he puts at roughly 7% per day, attributing it to the BMS and its connectivity staying awake. On a boat left on a mooring for a fortnight that is not a rounding error. He also objects to the DVCC float behaviour — 13.8V, or 3.45V per cell, which he considers too high for a float, worked around by dropping the charge current limit to zero and producing micro-cycling instead.

On safety he overcharged a cell deliberately: it vented without fire on the first attempt, and only ignited after more than four and a half hours at around 40V, roughly four times nominal. That is abuse well past anything a charging fault would produce. His conclusion is conditional, not a recommendation: if the use case genuinely needs the throughput and density, the premium is probably worth it.

LiTime announced the LiHeat 12V 320Ah ComFlex on 8 September. The specification that makes it interesting is the connector panel: CAN and RS485 ports carrying RV-C, NMEA 2000 and Victron communication, the last exposing what LiTime states as 25-plus battery parameters. On a 48V rack pack that is unremarkable. On a 12V house battery at this price it is not — bus comms on 12V have generally meant Epoch, Discover or a Victron Lithium NG.

The rest: 4,096Wh, a 200A continuous BMS with a claimed 1,000A one-second peak, 59.97lb, 14.49 × 7.44 × 10.04in, dual-mode self-heating, discharge to -20°C, charge cut-off at 0°C with recovery at 5°C. The app keeps 30 days of history and up to 300 event records, and firmware updates over the air. Up to 16 units parallel with communication, or 4P4S without. LiTime's own page lists 4,000 cycles at 100% depth of discharge and a five-year warranty, read on 13 September at $929.99 against a $1,299.99 list. Europe is given as mid-September.

One caution carried forward. In July we covered Will Prowse challenging LiTime over a UL 1973 claim that disappeared from a 320Ah listing after his review. The company's materials for the ComFlex cite "380+ certifications" in aggregate and itemise none of them, which is not an answer to that question.

Goal Zero recalled approximately 46,200 YETI 3000X portable power stations under CPSC recall number 26-712. The defect is stated plainly: "the recalled power station's circuit board can overheat, posing a risk of serious injury from fire and burn hazards." Four reports of units catching fire, overheating or smoking; no injuries reported. The units are the 92lb, roughly 24.4 × 18.5 × 22.3in silver-and-black models.

The remedy is the part worth reading twice. Owners are told to stop using the unit and install a free firmware update through the Goal Zero application, or contact the company for help doing it. No dealer, no return, no hardware. That makes this the second firmware-remedy safety campaign in our coverage after Winnebago's over-the-air fix for the Ekko phantom-generator-start recall in August, and the first we have seen where a consumer product with a fire risk is closed out by an app.

It is a genuinely efficient outcome and also a structural one: a firmware remedy only reaches the units whose owners open the app. A dealer campaign has a VIN list; this has an install base. In fairness to Goal Zero, the alternative for 46,200 92lb boxes is not obviously better.

Dating, honestly: this was announced on 20 August, outside our normal window. It did not appear in our sources at the time and we are running it now rather than not at all.

The Wi-Fi module launched alongside the V22 is sold separately at about $26, and Off-Grid Garage's bench work establishes the useful fact that it is not V22-specific: it reads data already present on the RS485 port, so it will work on a free port of a V14, V15 or V19 BMS as well. If Wi-Fi is the reason you were considering a V22, it is not a reason.

It runs in two modes. In LAN mode it joins your network and serves a local web page with full settings and live data; in WAN mode it connects to JK's own IoT portal for access from anywhere. Setup is the familiar hotspot-then-credentials routine.

Two caveats from the bench, both practical. The module is a genuinely standalone device — its status appears nowhere in the JK mobile app or the online portal, only on the module's own indicator lights, which is an argument for mounting it outside the battery box where you can see it and reach its reset button. And the WAN-mode portal is a website rather than an app: Andy describes it as awkward on a phone, with constant zooming and scrolling. Compare Gobel Power's dongle-plus-cloud arrangement, which we covered in August and which integrates monitoring rather than bolting it on.