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Solar PV: LiFePO₄ Cell Code Parsing

By Ian Mander, 27 March to 1 April 2022.

LiFePO₄ batteries are products which are going to become more and more important, but the cheap batteries are very poorly put together. This makes assembling one's own battery from cells a more attractive option, while still keeping the total price down.

But how to tell what your cells are just by looking at them? Genuine cells will have a clearly visible 2D scanning code – known as a matrix barcode – near the middle of the top surface, laser etched into the aluminium case. It encodes information about the manufacturer, factory, production line, and date of manufacture.

In the black plastic sheet stuck onto the top of the cell there will be a cutout to allow the code to be seen. If the code cannot be seen or if it is off to one side the cell is second hand – buyer beware.

Most of this information comes from this page and this page at Energie Panda.

The first three characters are the manufacturer.

The 4th character designates the type of product. The code C means it's a cell.

The 5th character is the chemistry. B is LiFePO₄.

Characters 6 and 7 are the model number.

The next 6 characters (8-13) are the factory trace code, with two characters for the product line, followed by (I think) four characters for the task order number.

The 14th character is where the factory is.

Characters 15-17 encode the date of manufacture. Energie Panda appears to have made a mistake in the date represented by S; it's the 28th not 29th.

The last 7 characters are the number of the item produced on that particular date.

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