li fe po4 battery upgrade?
I am considering upgrading to lithium batteries has anyone here don that. I am looking at installing 3 100Ah batteries in parallel and using a PD 9160 converter to recharge them when my Outback solar...
Forum Discussion
I personally don't see Lifepo4 batts becoming mainstream for RV's in the foreseeable future. I was involved in field testing them for the military a couple times in recent years and they did considerably worse than we anticipated based on accelerated lab testing. The cumulative effects of temperature, sitting idle fully charged etc. we encountered in real use had a considerably more of a negative affect on life than the manufacturer data had us expecting.
You'll want to make sure your BMS takes care of shutting things down during discharge when any single cell drops too low, build in protections to prevent charging when too cold, or too hot, and I personally wouldn't take the battery into the top 10 percent of it's capacity either keeping it between 90 percent and 20 percent. If possible it would be good to have a method for dumping the charge down to about 40 percent if it's going to be sitting idle for more than a couple days, especially in hot weather.
Finally, keep in mind that personal observation compared to measured data can be significantly different with new technology. People tend to see what they expect to see. It's also wise to compare apples to apples. Those using batteries in a marine environment, or maybe aircraft environment face significantly different conditions temperature extreme wise than what you might encounter in a land based RV. Finding data for use in situations closely resembling what you may encounter can be difficult give the relatively small amount of information currently available.
You'll want to make sure your BMS takes care of shutting things down during discharge when any single cell drops too low, build in protections to prevent charging when too cold, or too hot, and I personally wouldn't take the battery into the top 10 percent of it's capacity either keeping it between 90 percent and 20 percent. If possible it would be good to have a method for dumping the charge down to about 40 percent if it's going to be sitting idle for more than a couple days, especially in hot weather.
Finally, keep in mind that personal observation compared to measured data can be significantly different with new technology. People tend to see what they expect to see. It's also wise to compare apples to apples. Those using batteries in a marine environment, or maybe aircraft environment face significantly different conditions temperature extreme wise than what you might encounter in a land based RV. Finding data for use in situations closely resembling what you may encounter can be difficult give the relatively small amount of information currently available.
