-
Xantrex LITHIUM ION Batteries
I just noticed that Xantrex has their own Lithium Ion Batteries.
http://www.xantrex.com/documents/lithium/20200702_LithiumIonBattery_Datasheet2020.pdf
AVAILABLE IN:The Xantrex Lithium Ion Iron Phosphate (LiFePO ) battery is North America’s first UL1973 listed* battery for mobile applications. Equipped with redundant safety features, the Xantrex lithium battery is the safest in the market today. Specifically designed to withstand the harsh operating environments of mobile applications, the Xantrex lithium battery lasts up to 3,000 cycles compared to a traditional lead acid or AGM battery, which typically lasts 400-500 cycles. The Xantrex lithium battery offers exceptional power density and is also available with a heating blanket option if installation is outside the main cabin.
125 Ah 12V, 450 Ah 12V* (*450 Ah / 12V is only available as a built to order option), 600 Ah 12V, 1260 Ah 12V, 300 Ah 24V, 150 Ah 51V.
The Xantrex web site does not provide any price information.
Jon, et al, what, if anything, do you know about the Xantrex batteries.
-
13 Replies
-
I am not qualified to compare the various batteries. Before buying Relion I looked at the various LiFePo4 batteries available and to a great extent the purchase decision was made on the basis os spending 2 days in a booth with the Relion representative and asking him endless hard questions.
Specific to Relion however was I had bad or incomplete advice relative to using the LiFePo4 batteries connected in series and parallel as my coach was set up. After installation I had more questions and when discussing my questions with the technician he said he was not comfortable with my series and parallel cabling and he kicked my questions to an engineer who reinforced the technicians concern.
Where Relion went to the top of my list of good suppliers was through the engineer Relion took my original 12V, 8D sized batteries back, replaced them with 24V, 8D sized batteries AND paid for the 24VDC to 12VDC voltage reducers and the recabling of my coach. They did that because their literature was misleading and failed to state batteries set up in series and parallel need periodic separate recharging to restore them. That recharging could be needed as soon as a few months to a couple of years, something not easily done on my coach.
The Relion support was way beyond anything I could have expected so that is my sole unit of measurement relative to Li batteries.
I bought the batteries through Tom and we both spent a lot of time explaining how our various coach house batteries are set up by the different converters and we all were learning.
-
AGM only getting 400 – 500 cycles, Jon needs some of that for his garden.
1984 96" with 8V92TA
(remodeled Liberty Coach)
Greenwood, MO -
I would be nice of the inverters kept track of the cycles and how low each was when the recharge began. Given the state of technology today, that shouldn’t be too hard to do.
-
Charging cycle counts would not be as easy as it might appear.
My coach inverters (Outback) appear to always go into bulk when power to them is restored. So if I start with batteries that have been in float, at the end of the day of driving and use shore power or the generator my batteries which have seen 27.7 volts all day, are going to go into bulk charge.
As soon as they cycle down from bulk to absorb to float, they go into “silent” mode which means the float charge is turned off, and when the voltage drops to some point below 25.6 float charge is restored at around 26.8 the inverters go back to “silent” mold.
Keep in mind when reading this an LiFePo4 battery voltage starts to drop off rapidly when it gets below 25 volts so the SOC at 25.6 is actually very low.
But until inverter input power is removed and then restored I do not think my batteries are seeing a full charge/discharge/charge cycle.
I have spent quite a bit of time measuring useful battery life of my Li batteries because I need to know what to expect in the real world. If I let my inverters go through the full three stages of charging, then with all the loads I normally have when dry camping (such as overnight in a rest area) with the generator off, I have at least 19 hours before the Li batteries reach the voltage where the voltage curve is almost vertical.
If I begin the same test after the voltage in silent mode is sitting at 25.6 which would be a fully charged AGM voltage, my Li batteries are at 50% or less SOC and I will reach shut down in 8 hours or less.
I have never measured SOC after the batteries have been charged by the alternator when driving all day. They are not at 100% SOC, but are near it. I probably have ample stored power to dry camp 12 to 15 hours.
It is likely I will never know because I use shore and generator power almost 100% of the time when I am not driving and if I assume whenever silent mode goes back to float voltage it is a charge cycle, and it resumes at more than 50% SOC, it appears I will have a 13,000 charge cycle life on my batteries.
The stated life of 500 cycles of AGM batteries could be true if they were always drawn down to the point where they are virtually dead before recharging, but I cannot believe you would get less than 1000 cycles unless they were consistently drawn down to almost no voltage.
2000 Featherlite H3-45
2024 Jeep Grand Cherokee
Leesburg, FL -
Jon:
Have you ever gone down the solar road?
I had solar panels on a previous coach and as long as the battery’s were not severely drawn down, the 11AM till 2 PM sun would do a nice job of topping of the battery’s.
I know nothing about LI and solar. Curious if you have investigated solar pertaining to LI.
Chuck
2000 Featherlite H3-45
2024 Jeep Grand Cherokee
Leesburg, FL -
You can look at the last few issues of Bus Conversion magazine for an article I wrote about using Li batteries for some or all of the house loads on buses where the house and chassis batteries are separate. Using Li for the inverter loads and lead acid for the 12vdc loads gives you the best of both worlds without the engineering down side some encounter using Li alone for all the house loads.
Solar can be easily integrated into recharging either Li or lead acid batteries by using one or more MPPT solar charge controllers dedicated to the Li and/or lead acid batteries. Never mix the two! In my bus I use four 100ah Li batteries for the inverter loads and two 8D AGMs for the 12vdc house loads. The chassis batteries are completely separate from these two. I have one 40 amp MPPT solar charge controller hooked to the Li batteries and another 40 amp MPPT solar charge controller hooked to the AGMs. I use four 120 watt portable solar panels and mix and match these to keep both the Li and the AGMs to about the same state of relative charge depending on how we use the coach, how much sun there is, and how long we run the generator each day while dry camping. These small portable solar panels will not keep up with the house loads but they do cut down on the generator run time in many dry camping situations.
Jerry
-
There is a virtual flood of Li batteries coming to market at lower and lower prices. Very hard to compare from the specs provided by the seller which may simply be based on the cell specs and not the as built specs. The battery management system is a critical component that is especially hard to compare from just listed specs. Many of these new to market Li batteries are now advertising 300 amp hour capacities but 200 amp MBSs suggesting the internal wiring and connectors are not really capable of supporting the charge or discharge current suggested by the 300 amp hour capacity rating. Stated energy density (capacity per unit of weight) is all over the map.
the only way to really compare different Li batteries is to do repeated capacity tests, discharge and recharge tests, and then tear them open to see how they are actually constructed, what size the internal interconnect cables and terminals are, and how robust the BMS is inside. Even then you really don’t know much about the cells used other than what you can test.
my experience says buy from a known supplier with physical warehousing in the USA or Canada who is financially capable of standing behind their warrantee. A long warrantee does you no good if the supplier is here today and gone tomorrow or if they refer you to the “manufacturer” for warrantee fulfillment.
-
I have never even considered solar.
I am a generator guy and despite my frequent use I will never wear out my generator so to add something that cuts down on my generator run time makes little sense to me. I suppose if I was going to park in the desert every winter with no services I would rethink that.
Apart from the cost of oil changes, at today’s fuel prices my generator costs me about $10 per hour to run.
-
Lifeline is now close to a group 24 & 27 Lifepo4, they will be available soon. They have done years of testing and their early batteries purchased from China when disassembled were nothing but junk and crappy material.
I would guess there is a lot of junk out there being produced that will fail early and finding warranty support will be a joke. Stick with the brand names like Relion, Battleborn, etc..
-
Hi Jon,
the feedback I get from my readers is they want to cut down on generator run time not because of cost, but because of noise and smell.
jerry
-
The use or non-use of the generator is a choice we all have. Fortunately mine runs quiet, and I am not aware of any exhaust smells.
I do know the worst thing we can do to our coaches is to not exercise all the systems, including the generator, Webasto or Aquahot, level low, etc.
My strong feeling regarding the use of the generator is I never have to scrimp on the use of energy, such as opening windows instead of running 3 or 4 A/Cs, or having to manage energy so I do not exceed limits or worry about batteries.
-
I don’t know if there is an equivalent to “weight and balance” for a bus, but my battery bay is opposite the generator bay. If I switch to lighter and perhaps fewer lithium batteries, will that introduce a problem with weight imbalance? Of course the kitchen is on the generator side as well.
-
Liam, There are two questions you need to answer before considering LiFePo4.
First, is your front axle as loaded with your stuff over weight? With batteries and a generator up there it will be hard to keep it from overloading the axle.
Then next question is how long do you intend to keep the coach and is the cost of switching to Li batteries justified based on the answer.
As to side to side balance you can answer that by weighing all 6 wheel positions independently. Some scales are laid out so you can drive with one set of wheels off the scale. The answer will be in the weights. Nobody else can answer that because it is rare when there are two identical coaches loaded the same.
Log in to reply.