The review. Bimble Solar 400 amp hour 12 volt Nickel Iron battery bank.

I have have been using a 12 volt  400 amp hour bank of these Nickel Iron batteries for around 4 years now. 

We are off grid in Spain using solar panels  (800 watts) and all our other equipment is Victron

In my experience these Ukraine made batteries are totally crap and unsuitable for anyone who is off grid and does not possess  a massive diesel generator.

OK that is the short version of my experience with them lol, here is the long version.

We received them getting on for 4 years ago , the dealings with Bimble solar were acceptable and they arrived within the delivery time (they had to be ordered from the Ukraine ,possibly made to order)

They came with a manual, a single sheet of instructions.

For 3  years we had no problems but last summer I noticed one of the cells wouldn't hold a charge. I emailed Bimble explaining the situation and asking for advice. basically they ignored me. 

Suffice to say I found Bimble's after sales service useless and believe me that is understating it.

Nevertheless they did allow me to buy one replacement cell which I was happy with and that arrived and replaced the faulty cell without incident.

To be honest at this stage I still had faith in these batteries, the faulty cell itself did appear to have an anomaly you could see if you looked at the top of the plates so it could have just been I was unlucky, so I was rather upset to find a second cell beginning to fail two months later.

These batteries are meant to last 30 years not 3 years. Bimble solar did send me some advice on how to recover these batteries. 

Now forgive me for wondering why 3 year old batteries, used every day, should require recovering but hey here was the advice.....

Charge the bank for 24hrs at 17 to 17.5 volts and then discharge to (I think it was) 11volts 5 times.

Well, being off grid and needing power every day this was just not an option for me. 

Now (winter) we have to charge the bank at 17 volts bulk/absorption charge and 16.5 volts float to get anything like enough charge into the batteries. Where as last winter we were on 16 volt absorption 15.5 volt float.

I am guessing these batteries will have a lifespan of 5 to 6 years, hopefully lithium batteries will have reduced in price a little by then!