[grumpy]

Hi,

Does anybody know of a Canadian distributor/retailer of lithium phosphate (a.k.a. Saphion) cells or battery packs? The only supplier I'm aware of is Overlander in the UK, but the shipping costs are getting prohibitive so I'm looking for a supplier closer to home. Or perhaps there is an American company I don't know about?

Cheers.[/url]

[grumpy]

Found one closer to home, if anyone is interested:
http://www.power-motion.com/

Would still prefer a Canadian supplier - if you know of one, please pipe up.

Cheerio.

[boberos]

Does anyone know how well these new "Lithium Phosphate" batteries perform?

[grumpy]

-Nominal voltage is 3.2V.
-Fully charged they're 4.2V (3.5V is healthier for the cells though) and you can discharge them to 2V if you need to.
-Can "fast" charge at 2C.
-Discharge up to 15C continuous, 20C burst.
-Very flat discharge curve.
-Much safer than lipos - no thermal runaway. (i.e. no ballooning, venting, or fires)
-Relatively cheap compared to lipos.
-Environmentally safe.
-Like lipos, no memory effect.
-Can be used safely with non-lipo ESCs.
-Charge with any lipo charger.

-Slightly heavier than "equivalent" lipos.
-Less power density than lipos.

Bottom line: a safe middle ground between NiMH and lipos performance-wise, without any of the dangerous effects of lipos.
The fact that they are slightly heavier than lipos is sometimes a good thing, as I find with some models using lipos results in a plane difficult to balance. Also, their smaller nominal voltage makes it a bit easier to match Lithium Phosphate packs to specific voltage requirements.

I've been using them for a few months in two of my models and I really like them. They won't replace my lipos, but in certain applications I prefer them.

Check RCGroups for actual performance tests and graphs.