How many cycles will a LiFePO₄ battery do, and what does that mean in years?

SOLiCORE is rated at more than 5,000 cycles at 100% depth of discharge and 10,000 cycles at 80% depth of discharge.

Translating cycles into years requires knowing how often the battery is cycled, and this is where most published comparisons become meaningless:

Duty	Cycles per year	10,000-cycle horizon
Daily cycling (solar, off-grid, SAPS)	approximately 365	approximately 27 years
Twice daily (peak shaving, high-use site)	approximately 730	approximately 13 years
Pure standby (UPS, telecom float)	A handful	Cycles never govern

Two honest caveats that suppliers rarely volunteer:

On standby duty, cycle life is the wrong metric. A UPS or telecom battery may see a dozen genuine discharges in its life. What governs its replacement is calendar ageing, time, temperature and float regime, not cycles. A 10,000-cycle rating tells you very little about a battery that will be cycled fifteen times. Ask instead about calendar life and for lithium, about how the product behaves when held at high state of charge for years, because LiFePO₄ does not enjoy that.

Cycle ratings are measured under laboratory conditions, controlled temperature, controlled rate, controlled depth. Real duty is messier.

The comparison against VRLA is nonetheless decisive for cycling applications. A typical VRLA discharged to 100% of capacity manages around 300 cycles; at 30% depth of discharge, around 800. On a daily-cycle duty, that is a two-to-three-year replacement interval against a decade-plus. That is the whole-of-life argument, and it is strongest precisely where the battery cycles.