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
A practical account...In my case I came from two 6v GC’s (at about 105 usable a/hrs) to now a single 200a/hr Li having a much greater DOD, which means that charging frequency has been cut about in half. This also means that it’s often easier to manage a re-charge sometime during the mid-day when temps have warmed a bit (this, a U.S. 40’ish parallel thingy...), or just wait another day or two until inclement weather decides to pass - however I’ve negated this temp issue entirely by simply mounting the battery beneath the dinette seat and repurposing the battery box...
Either way, I mostly camp off-grid, thus re-charging is done almost entirely via 440w of roof-top solar, this divided between two switchable controllers (300w & 140w)...In fact, I can’t even recall the last time I started the genny, but know it was NOT to charge batts!! With this aforementioned set-up I would have little if any concern about managing excess charging amps, and for the most part charging occurs passively without much notice...
Were I to need the on-board 3 stage* PD 9245 45amp charger, charging could be easily managed via the optional Charge Wizard pendant, but even in boost mode I never once witnessed (via Victron BMV-12 meter) this charger outputting it’s rated 45 amps, in fact what’s more typical is roughly about half that amount if even that...
*not Li specific
Yet for even faster charging (say, at home in RV garage) I also have on-board a ProSine inverter (w/100a charger), but the maximum amount of charging amps I’ve ever witnessed going to the Li battery is 67amps and this was while the battery’s beginning SOC was at about 40-45’ish %...
Though I do sense the well stated Li consternations from certain posters, it’s my belief that these concerns are mostly regional and application dependent, but nevertheless are still valid battery type considerations...Thus, with these particular concerns in mind, SiO2 may in fact be the more practical battery choice, and less costly alternative to a temperature sensitive Li...JMO.
In my own (admittedly anecdotal) case example, Li has made charging both less frequent and mostly passive, while ended nagging low voltage alarms (“dang furnace won’t run”!!) while enhancing solar harvest recovery times (to recovery earlier in typical day), this, per various ‘back-to-back’ (FWC to Li) off-grid charging episodes...
3 tons
Either way, I mostly camp off-grid, thus re-charging is done almost entirely via 440w of roof-top solar, this divided between two switchable controllers (300w & 140w)...In fact, I can’t even recall the last time I started the genny, but know it was NOT to charge batts!! With this aforementioned set-up I would have little if any concern about managing excess charging amps, and for the most part charging occurs passively without much notice...
Were I to need the on-board 3 stage* PD 9245 45amp charger, charging could be easily managed via the optional Charge Wizard pendant, but even in boost mode I never once witnessed (via Victron BMV-12 meter) this charger outputting it’s rated 45 amps, in fact what’s more typical is roughly about half that amount if even that...
*not Li specific
Yet for even faster charging (say, at home in RV garage) I also have on-board a ProSine inverter (w/100a charger), but the maximum amount of charging amps I’ve ever witnessed going to the Li battery is 67amps and this was while the battery’s beginning SOC was at about 40-45’ish %...
Though I do sense the well stated Li consternations from certain posters, it’s my belief that these concerns are mostly regional and application dependent, but nevertheless are still valid battery type considerations...Thus, with these particular concerns in mind, SiO2 may in fact be the more practical battery choice, and less costly alternative to a temperature sensitive Li...JMO.
In my own (admittedly anecdotal) case example, Li has made charging both less frequent and mostly passive, while ended nagging low voltage alarms (“dang furnace won’t run”!!) while enhancing solar harvest recovery times (to recovery earlier in typical day), this, per various ‘back-to-back’ (FWC to Li) off-grid charging episodes...
3 tons
