Wow, is it in the spirit of Halloween that there is so much discussion of imaginary boogie men?
There are tens (maybe hundreds?) of thousands of folks out there running various forms of lithium house batteries and 99.9% of them are not using any sort of 'alternator protector'. Yet we are not hearing about all the blown up/melted/possessed alternators. Reason being is that there is not an issue here.
Even if 'load dump' were an issue, there is still a large lead acid starting battery in the circuit, which is functionally the same as a massive capacitor and will absorb any supposed voltage spikes from a poorly designed alternator.
The same applies to regenerative braking - even if there were a short duration increase in voltage, there are far more sensitive electronics in a modern car than the batteries, lithium or otherwise. Even Sterling's own literature disproves this as an issue:
The voltage from this smart alternator/regen system is well regulated to below 14.6V, and is only briefly above 14, well within battery charging specs.
I would like to hear some more about these 'eddy currents' though?
