[Archived]

Jon The real advantage of lithium besides charge cycles is that they are a 99 percent charge efficiency unit. While a lead acid/agm battery takes 6 hours to go through the bulk/absorb/float settings the lithium is taking everything you can send at it and finished in say 2 hours. It’s really a great fit for RVs and boats.

that being said – I wouldn’t rely on the battery bms units to keep the batteries safe. That’s a last gasp backup. You really want a charger that charges at their profile – which is usually 14.2 bulk, 1 hr absorb and no float. Or float it at 13.55. Or you will cook the batteries. Same for alternator charging – just cut it off after it goes above 14 and do not continue to charge it. For low voltage body inverters can safely cut off at a certain voltage level. But you want your straight dc loads to also be cut off below 12.

oh and they cannot be charged below freezing Some manufacturers are coming out with a heater wrapped unit that will heat the battery up if it gets below freezing but do be careful along this front

other than also needing to replace the inverter/charger to a newer unit – lithium’s really are excellent units.

I would say the Victron units are best. They also seem to be using a slightly less safe chemistry (but much higher energy density but still pretty safe ) nmc based battery on their new HE line. Battleborn is also excellent with their 10y warranty. Relion is recently pushing hard. Don’t have enough reports on them just yet but they seem to make. A good battery. Somehow they are priced even higher than the market leading victrons which doesn’t make much sense. But they appear to be an good battery.

and lastly – I don’t think anyone should assume these are drop in replacements. They are essentially a new battery chemistr and your systems need to accommodate it (like gel to agm) or you won’t get the life out of them and will cook them.

[Archived]

I had Lifeline AGM’s which lasted 10 years but at $600/each I needed to look around as replacements became necessary. I bought Chinesse UBC 8D replacements for $300/each. More than 6 years later I still have the UBC’s. I am seeing some reduction in performance but they still work just fine (I have 4 – 8D’s). The fridge still makes it through the night and all the 120V devices work in the morning. I am not interested in much else as I am going to have to start the genset in the morning for the coffee to brew anyway. By the time that’s over (she needs a 2nd cup) the batteries are pretty good and we will be hitting the road shortly anyway.

Again, how often and for long do you really dry camp? I’m guessing not often and not long. Even if you do, running the genset from time to time would take years to justify the crazy cost of LI vs. AGM.

I get the cool factor and being able to 1 up your neighbor, but otherwise, the LI does not make a whole lot of financial sense.

[Archived]

David, did you call me for the Lifeline show pricing?

[George]

“I get the cool factor and being able to 1 up your neighbor”

Heck, that’s good enough for me. 🙂

[Thomas]

Like I said before, Lifepo4 is not for everyone, but you do get what you pay for.

[DON]

I don’t necessarily think it’s a cool factor. Many people are scared of lithium’s anyhow. They don’t know that the lithium’s being used in your phone are more dangerous of catching on fire than a lifepo4 battery.

I don’t always subscribe to the – well you can have essntially a bit more than half lithium bank because that’s not always true if you have a 750 amp hour agm bank – the “safe” discharge level is 375 but you do have another 300+ amps that you can use in a pinch with a 400 amp hour bank – you still have 400. But that 400 is a solid 400 and depending upon the agm draw rate – you might only have 600 total amps vs 750. Also lithium’s have higher energy per amp hour delivered because they are delivering at 13.2 for 80 percent of the time whereas agm are delivering somewhere between 12.8 to 12

but honestly – it’s a use case scenario. If you don’t ever dry camp – then it doesn’t make much sense. The real factors for lithium are they can be heavily discharged and charged quickly. If you ever plan or design to have ac units running off battery – lithium’s would handle that much better than agms would. You can recharge an entire 800 amp hour battery bank in essentially less than hours. It takes a solid 6 hours for agm at that point. So you aren’t wasting generator hours/diesel running it longer than you need.

[glen]

That ignores what I see as real benefits. I do dry camp, but never hesitate to run a generator or work my batteries hard, worry about charge rates, and all the other things folks who use auto-start or run A/Cs through inverters think about.

What has my attention is a significant reduction in weight which is nothing but good news to my axle that is at its limits. But despite the weight reduction I still have much more power so I can be less concerned about checking battery status so I don’t let the AGMs get below 50% SOC. With Li I will go all night long with the refrigerator, water pump, aux compressor, lights, tv, etc and still have a lot of battery power available. But besides weight and additional power, the way I use batteries I will never ever have to buy batteries again if I have Li because I will get 5 to 10X the number of recharges.

Off course I will need to own the coach and live for another 50 years.

[Mark]

Hello,

I just installed 8 4D AGMs on my 1998 Featherlight and really keeping an eye on how many hours I get on my coach without auto start gettng the generator going.

Batteries were fully charged from shore at my home

Drove 7 hours to a walmart

Turned of engine and went to invertor power – 5 pm – Battery actual was 25.3

Used coach with fridge, light, misc items like coffee pot, TVs, water pump, Aqua hot and other misc

Now it is 8 am (15 hours later) and battery actual is at 24.5. My auto start kicks on at 22.2 so I a far from that

In a couple of days, I am going to need AC so I am curious how long I get with ACs going.

Would love to hear from others on their experience.

Thanks

[Bob]

Our coach was built with Lithium Ion battery technology. We have three Li house batteries as we have a four slide coach, it’s my understanding that 2 and 3 slide coaches will have 2 Li house batteries.

When we lost power at my storage facility, the genny kicked on after about 13-14 hours. I’m not sure exactly as I was at home and I was checking my phone during the night so I could see the battery level and if the genny was on.

Just the fridge, small basement fridge, chargers, etc. were on while in storage (we have four 3,500 watt inverters).

By the time I got to the storage facility the next morning, the genny was running charging everything back up.

Our genny is set to come on when the batteries reach about 30%.

Safe travels,
Mark

[Archived]

I would really like someone to explain to me why running A/Cs through inverters is better or preferable to starting the generator and loading it up with everything possible.

Talk slow (my brain just cannot understand the concept) because for 30 years I have used the generator I am dragging around with me and cannot figure out the negatives of putting it to work.

[mark]

Jon, I would like to run a single Cruisair in the bedroom on some nights. I haven’t determined how many amp-hours it would draw on a typical duty cycle, but I don’t think I’d have much luck with my current battery setup. My generator compartment has sound insulation that helps, but I still prefer to only run it to charge batteries, run multiple Cruisairs or electric heaters, or run the water heater.

[Archived]

There is a guy fulltiming in a trailer, using Tesla lithium batteries. They are half or maybe a third of the cost of buying similar Ah conventional lithium batteries and should last longer. You have to come up with a battery management system which he has done. His website is boondoctor dot com. Makes for some interesting reading.

Chad Speer, think I worked with you til I retired, or you became a stuperviser.

[Bernie]

Chad, there is no absolute answer to how much battery power is needed to run an A/C all night because the A/C may or may not cycle, plus other current draws have to be considered.

On a 12 volt coach the running current draw on roof or Cruiseairs is about 130 amps. On conventional batteries like AGM you would need about 2600 amp hours or a little more than 10 8D batteries and no other loads.

That’s a lot of weight and cost just to be able to stay cool without running the generator. When we need heat or cooling we run the generator all the time. At .4 GPH there is little cost associated with doing that.

If the A/C is cycling the start up loads are as much as 40 amps on 120 and I have no clue how that impacts or affects batteries, inverters, etc. A generator will handle the loads easily.

[Joe]

I was riding the fence, and the decision was more complex because Tom’s post about the Relion 330 AH 8D AGM batteries for less than Lifeline really added to the difficulty of Li making sense financially.

But I was not motivated by the economics. If I did a lot of dry camping, and if I was going to still have my coach for more than 10 years (maybe, but who wants to share the road with an 87 year old bus driver?) the the economics become a factor in favor of Li.

My bottom line is simple. I get almost 50% more power in reserve, I save 400 pounds, most of which comes off the steer axle, and once installed I never have to pull an entertainment center to get at or see my batteries. Even if I get half of the recharge cycles from the Li that are probable, I am still looking at a life of more than 25 years on them. It sounds like a big lie, but all indications are the way I use my batteries I should get 10,000 to 13,000 charge cycles compared to my AGM 1,000 cycles.

They will be changed out prior to Oysterfest if everything works out on some other work I am going to get done, but regardless I will start documenting everything I can and dedicate a thread to the process.

My decision is not likely to be the same decision others will make. It is not intended to provide bragging rights because my batteries are invisible in the sense I never have problems with them during my 5 years of ownership, they are there, they do what is expected and I get rid of them before they show signs of failing. I expect the same with the Li, except I know I can pull more power from them before I have to consider the generator. My AGM haven’t ever fallen below 50% SOC, and I never end the day of driving without having shore or generator power top off the charge through the inverters.

Now I expect to have one less time related replacement to worry or think about, while getting real benefits with a product I hope to never see again.

[mark]

Marcela – Ozark circa 2009?