LifePo4 Charge Performance
Thinking seriously about replacing our two GC2's with a pair of 100ah LifePo4's. Hearing a lot of chatter about how lithiums accept a charge much quicker than lead cells. Very familiar with how ou...
Forum Discussion
It can come out better for the LFPs by some amount. The next question is whether that amount is worth the Money for your own situation.
The OP knows now he can get 135 - 115 = 20 more AH in his 3 hours of gen time if he swaps over to LFP. He might think that is worth whatever 200AH of LFP costs or not . ($1,500 ? Yipes!) Only he knows that.
And now I understand BFL It is about the money. Certainly a very valid argument.
Well I'll let you know that when I needed new batteries and knew nothing about nothing I was happy and ready to buy Leads. Because of the placement of my inverter/chargers the off gassing from Leads ruled them out. So then I was left with either Lifelines at roughly $3000 for 600 usable amps, yes I know they can go deeper, but that is what the Lifeline salesman suggested. A friend suggested looking at Lithiums.
I asked around and all I ever heard on these forums was "eek" they catch fire and "oh my what a waste of money". Of course this wasn't from anyone who had them, except for one guy. I called him we spoke he explained his experiences and I took a chance and found some with 1000amps usable for $329 more than the Lifelines including BMS. You do the math.
Well I later sold the bus to a friend and it is still charging up and down despite 7 years of full time use, close to 80,000 miles and 4 years of off-grid use. And they take those Batts up and down everyday they are off-grid. They sew, iron, insta-pot and even ran a hot-tub off those batts and they are still doing well.
The best real world experience I encountered was at a rally with 10-12 very similar busses. Same marque, charge systems, generators and either Leads or AGM's. The year before I'd be right next to them charging a couple hours in the morning and a couple hours every night. Two years later with the lithiums and the same charge settings I only needed to charge 2 1/2hrs a day.
You guys continue to debate why they don't charge faster and I'll just enjoy the magic reality that they do charge faster.
The OP knows now he can get 135 - 115 = 20 more AH in his 3 hours of gen time if he swaps over to LFP. He might think that is worth whatever 200AH of LFP costs or not . ($1,500 ? Yipes!) Only he knows that.
And now I understand BFL It is about the money. Certainly a very valid argument.
Well I'll let you know that when I needed new batteries and knew nothing about nothing I was happy and ready to buy Leads. Because of the placement of my inverter/chargers the off gassing from Leads ruled them out. So then I was left with either Lifelines at roughly $3000 for 600 usable amps, yes I know they can go deeper, but that is what the Lifeline salesman suggested. A friend suggested looking at Lithiums.
I asked around and all I ever heard on these forums was "eek" they catch fire and "oh my what a waste of money". Of course this wasn't from anyone who had them, except for one guy. I called him we spoke he explained his experiences and I took a chance and found some with 1000amps usable for $329 more than the Lifelines including BMS. You do the math.
Well I later sold the bus to a friend and it is still charging up and down despite 7 years of full time use, close to 80,000 miles and 4 years of off-grid use. And they take those Batts up and down everyday they are off-grid. They sew, iron, insta-pot and even ran a hot-tub off those batts and they are still doing well.
The best real world experience I encountered was at a rally with 10-12 very similar busses. Same marque, charge systems, generators and either Leads or AGM's. The year before I'd be right next to them charging a couple hours in the morning and a couple hours every night. Two years later with the lithiums and the same charge settings I only needed to charge 2 1/2hrs a day.
You guys continue to debate why they don't charge faster and I'll just enjoy the magic reality that they do charge faster.
