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
BFL13 wrote:Ok, might have been a bit optimistic.otrfun wrote:
OP here. Appreciate everybody's replies!
Really likin' the fact LifePo4's can accept full charge current for most of the charge cycle. I'm thinking our 45a converter will suffice with two 100ah LifePo4's for the time-being. If we can charge two 100ah LifePo4's from 10-20% to 90-95% in approx. 3 hours I think we'll be fine. That's approx. 150ah being placed back in the LifePo4's which is approx. double the ah we'd get into our two GC2's in 3 hours.
Looking forward to this LifePo4 upgrade!
150/45 = 3 hrs 20 minutes
45 x 3 = 135 AH
Best you can do with two GC2s is a 40-90 = 50% of C20, = 115 AH from a pair of 230 GC15s
that would be 40-80 at 45 = 92AH/45 = 2 hours, plus an hour to do the 80-90 with tapering amps =23 AH so :
115 AH takes 3 hours with a pair of GC2s
135 AH takes 3 hours with a pair of LFPs
BUT when you really want LFPs no matter what, you can call 135 twice 115 if you like. :)
We get ~80ah out of two GC2's when discharging from 90 to 50%. Takes us 2.5 - 3.0 hrs. to charge back to 90%. No doubt some get more ah and charge faster, but this is what we've managed with two different sets of GC2's.
Based on what I'm hearing here, two 100ah LifePo4's should easily accept the full 45a output from our converter at 14.4v for the full duration of an 80ah charge (say, 50 to 90%). *If* this is true, it should take approx. 1.8 hrs. to charge back 80ah.
So, not quite twice as fast as I had originally claimed/hoped, but (for us) possibly 28-40% faster. Still a decent improvement.
