Lithium batteries

blaze · Guru

RE: Lithium batteries

Ron-D · Guru

Iam not rubbishing lithium batteries there better tec than lead acid ,led acid is running everything we need perfectly as our powe requirements are not high,to throw the gas fridge out and replace it with a compressor fridge is not on the cards theres a lot of extra expense there,for no gain the way we camp,the Idea of saying modern vans that have not fitted lithium batteries and most dont at this stage,are living rough is ridiculous and completely wrong .

Grandad5 · Senior Member

I'm pleased to hear there are so many people who are quite happy with their AGM's and that they are doing everything you want them to do. Bravo!

And, I can understand how even though you are happy with what you have that you may want to read a lithium thread to learn a bit more about what they can do.

But why would anybody feel it appropriate to comment on a lithium thread when the only thing you know about them is they cost a bit more? And maybe that they can run more things. Things that you're personally not interested in. Especially when that comment is to then tell us they're not worth the extra cost?

Isn't that for the likes of me and others who are interested in lithium and all that they can do to decide?

So may I respectfully suggest, that unless you have purchased a lithium setup, used it extensively and come to that conclusion that your opinion is neither needed nor entirely worth hearing on a thread where others want to learn more from people with experience.

Cheers
Jim

Jaahn · Guru

Hi smile

My two cents worth ! No doubt lithium batteries are the future, every one is using them for every application. BUT they are expensive and do not look like they will get cheaper soon. So the question on peoples lips is, what will they cost and what will they do for me confuse The same question we all ask when we go to buy a car or a van or a TV etc.

I believe that if a GN wants a simple setup and is a modest user of power, when freecamping, then a couple of AGM batteries will do what they want. A few solar panels to charge them and for a modest outlay you can go out and enjoy the outdoors. Travel to sensible places taking into account the seasons. People have done that for a long time and been happy. hmm If you need a bit more power them get another one of each might do the job.

If you want a much higher level of comfort, need to go places where the climate is bad at the wrong time, or just decided that you have some money and want to be more comfortable, then two(three) options spring to my mind; first stay in motels or caravan parks. Very comfortable ! Secondly if you want to save money freecamping then spend up big and set up a powerhouse on the roof and big lithium batteries. disbelief Run that A/C and microwave and heater etc. (Perhaps option three is a generator ??)

For other people who want, or need a bit more power than above, then you have to decide what level of spending you can afford and how much power you really need. Do your home work, read a bit, ask a few places and make your own decision. But it is hard to get straight answers on the lithium battery cost question. Even on here. And the rumours of doom with cheap setups is wispered, even on here ! disbelief

Jaahn

PS This is my opinion. Just in case you had not noticed it while reading the text and the emoticons. I am not pushing it, just offering it for those who are interested in open discussion. I do not suggest that any decision is wrong ?? Just because I do not choose a caravan I do not suggest that it is then wrong to own a caravan instead of a MH.

-- Edited by Jaahn on Wednesday 26th of June 2019 04:19:52 PM

T1 Terry · Guru

Jaahn, adding emoticons is still pushing your opinion, just not in words. Maybe it isn't for you, that's fine, but to suggest those that choose to go down that track are wrong isn't your decision to make or suggest.

Why isn't there an AGM battery thread where you can tell all who read it just how great your choice was and a truthful assessment of just what you can run on a regular basis, how long you free camp each time you run these appliances and how much solar you have to provide recharging, or any other charging you might add to the mix like a generator or alternator charging.
I seem to remember a member here who said they had heaps of power using the minimal system they had then saying they start the engine so the alternator supplies power for the water pump so they can have a shower ......

T1 Terry

Grandad5 · Senior Member

Post Deleted

-- Edited by Grandad5 on Wednesday 26th of June 2019 02:36:26 PM

Ron-D · Guru

I choose agm and there great does everything we want ,I can easily afford lithium but what for were living very comfortable,thats an honest answer Iam not useing this site to flog lithium battery systems biggrin

T1 Terry · Guru

You never give up do you Ron. If I ask my wife to advertise on this site then any advice would be deemed bias towards those business interests. By never mentioning the business name I am in no way flogging our services, just offering free advice. You claim I am bias toward lithium batteries but clearly from your posts and emoticons you are anti lithium batteries.
I suggested that those that were pro AGM batteries put forward their personal experience clearly showing how much of the capacity they use each day, how much they have for recharging between solar, alternator and generator and any other charging method they might use. From there it could be determined how many days at a time the system will support that set up so people can determine if it really would suit their needs.
It's a logical approach, why aren't you starting a thread in support of your decision choice so the members here can see what really is possible with each type of system. If it is as good as you claim I would have expected you would jump at the chance to prove lithium is a waste of time and money for what you deem to be the average user.

T1 Terry

El Gringo · Senior Member

Ron-D wrote:
I choose agm and there great does everything we want ,I can easily afford lithium but what for were living very comfortable,thats an honest answer Iam not useing this site to flog lithium battery systems

Time to get off your Clydesdale, pick up your soap box and throw it under the steps when you get home.

Then tear up your 'I'm happy with what I have' Banner and throw it in the bin.

Sit down, have a nice cup of tea and relax.

Oh, and that drum, please stop banging it, its very annoying, especially when it's the same tune over and over.

-- Edited by El Gringo on Wednesday 26th of June 2019 05:03:45 PM

Ron-D · Guru

I never give up speak about the pot calling the kettle black ass biggrin .Look at the amount of text you put through ,look at what poor oldtrack had to put up with all you can see Terry is yourself ,crazy...

El Gringo · Senior Member

T1 Terry wrote:
You never give up do you Ron. If I ask my wife to advertise on this site then any advice would be deemed bias towards those business interests. By never mentioning the business name I am in no way flogging our services, just offering free advice. You claim I am bias toward lithium batteries but clearly from your posts and emoticons you are anti lithium batteries.
I suggested that those that were pro AGM batteries put forward their personal experience clearly showing how much of the capacity they use each day, how much they have for recharging between solar, alternator and generator and any other charging method they might use. From there it could be determined how many days at a time the system will support that set up so people can determine if it really would suit their needs.
It's a logical approach, why aren't you starting a thread in support of your decision choice so the members here can see what really is possible with each type of system. If it is as good as you claim I would have expected you would jump at the chance to prove lithium is a waste of time and money for what you deem to be the average user.

T1 Terry

STOP poking the monkeys T1. It makes them angry.

Remember your own philosophy, You can't teach a person who already knows it all.

Ron-D · Guru

El Gringo wrote:
Ron-D wrote:
I choose agm and there great does everything we want ,I can easily afford lithium but what for were living very comfortable,thats an honest answer Iam not useing this site to flog lithium battery systems

Time to get off your Clydesdale, pick up your soap box and throw it under the steps when you get home.
Then tear up your 'I'm happy with what I have' Banner and throw it in the bin.
Sit down, have a nice cup of tea and relax.
Oh, and that drum, please stop banging it, its very annoying, especially when it's the same tune over and over.

-- Edited by El Gringo on Wednesday 26th of June 2019 05:03:45 PM

Any one in there right mind can see whos banging the drum hundreds of pages of text compared to mine that statemends nuts.

El Gringo · Senior Member

Damn, there goes those drums again....
When will it stop????

Ron-D · Guru

El Gringo wrote:
Ron-D wrote:
I choose agm and there great does everything we want ,I can easily afford lithium but what for were living very comfortable,thats an honest answer Iam not useing this site to flog lithium battery systems

Time to get off your Clydesdale, pick up your soap box and throw it under the steps when you get home.
Then tear up your 'I'm happy with what I have' Banner and throw it in the bin.
Sit down, have a nice cup of tea and relax.
Oh, and that drum, please stop banging it, its very annoying, especially when it's the same tune over and over.

-- Edited by El Gringo on Wednesday 26th of June 2019 05:03:45 PM

Iam entitled to my opinion sit down read what I have posted very very slowly,and it will be very slow.

El Gringo · Senior Member

Bang, Bang, bang, bang.
On and on it goes...

Mamil · Senior Member

At the risk of interrupting a good argument with some sensible questions, Terry can I pick your brain for a moment?

I have a 100Ah LiFePO4 battery with built-in BMS and a Redarc charger with Li profile.

Firstly, what is a good cut-off voltage to set the load shedding on the Redarc charger at? The battery's internal BMS will shut down at 9.2V so obviously it should be above that, but how much above?
Second, the Redarc also has an SOC alarm, what do you suggest I set this at?
Lastly, the datasheet on my battery says minimum charge current of 10A. Now I don't really understand why there a minimum charge current at all, surely even a trickle going in is fine - that's all its getting at the end of it's charge cycle anyway?!? Sometimes on a cloudy day or early or late in the day my solar is generating a lot less than 10A, so is this bad for the battery in some way, and I should switch the solar off if it's producing less than 10A?
Thanks.

Ron-D · Guru

Naturally all your questions are sensible .

T1 Terry · Guru

Warning, long post with lots of explaining stuff. I'll put the numbers in red so if you want to just get the settings without the explanation why I'm suggesting them, then you can skip the boring bit.

Mamil wrote:
At the risk of interrupting a good argument with some sensible questions, Terry can I pick your brain for a moment?

I have a 100Ah LiFePO4 battery with built-in BMS and a Redarc charger with Li profile.
Firstly, what is a good cut-off voltage to set the load shedding on the Redarc charger at? The battery's internal BMS will shut down at 9.2V so obviously it should be above that, but how much above?
Second, the Redarc also has an SOC alarm, what do you suggest I set this at?
Lastly, the datasheet on my battery says minimum charge current of 10A. Now I don't really understand why there a minimum charge current at all, surely even a trickle going in is fine - that's all its getting at the end of it's charge cycle anyway?!? Sometimes on a cloudy day or early or late in the day my solar is generating a lot less than 10A, so is this bad for the battery in some way, and I should switch the solar off if it's producing less than 10A?
Thanks.

A few things you have mentioned are well within the description of an oxymoron. Not what you have said but what the manufacturer has claimed. First off, a lithium BMS that can't measure cell voltages and act on those voltages is not a lithium BMS at all. The fact both the battery manufacturer and the charge controller manufacturer both claim their product is a lithium battery BMS shows they are both either very naïve or they are telling major porkies.

Back to you questions:

Cut-off voltage.

A safe minimum cell voltage is 2.8v in any cell. The problem is you can't measure each cell voltage, only the 4 cells added together, this means 4 x 2.8v = 11.2v .... but 3 cells at 3v + 1 cell at 2.2v also equals 11.2v and a damaged battery. The batteries BMS cutting off at 9.2v even with all the cells balance perfectly at this low voltage (doesn't happen with a top balanced battery) would have each cell at 2.3v and haemorrhaging themselves to death. The more likely scenario is one cell going very low voltage while the others weren't damaged quite as much. Because you can't change one cell, it is still a stuffed or seriously damaged battery.

With that background knowledge in hand, I'd say 12v is as low as you would want to discharge the battery to be sure no cell went much below 2.8v.

Low end SOC cut off.

We have no idea what discharge rate the battery manufacturer used to determine it had 100Ah capacity, it could have been a C100 rate (discharged over 100hrs) a C20 rate (discharged over 20hrs, the accepted rate for AGM batteries) or a C2 rate, (discharged over 2hrs and the rate used for Winston lithium cell testing) A cell rated at C100 gives a lot higher capacity than one rated at C20. This link to a top quality AGM battery shows their 120Ah battery is measured at the C100 rate, at the accepted C20 rate it is only a 100Ah battery https://www.solaronline.com.au/120ah-concorde-12v-agm-deep-cycle-battery.html, at a C2 rate it would be around the 60Ah, half of the name plate capacity. Lithium batteries can multiply this effect by probably double, a 100Ah battery rated at a C2 rate but discharged at a C100 rate would be deliver over 200Ah, or reversed, the claimed 100Ah at a C100 rate would mean the battery tested at a C2 rate would only be a 50Ah battery.

So, with all of that in mind, probably a 5% SOC warning, if it is only a true 50Ah battery that will leave 2.5ah in the battery and that should stop a cell going low voltage, yet still give you the majority of the capacity useable. If it really is a genuine 100Ah you will have 5% remaining and have 95% useable.

Minimum charge current or trickle charging

The problem they are trying to avoid is cell voltage run away due to the high charging voltage they have claimed the battery can handle. At 10 amps the charge rate is either 10% of the 100Ah capacity or 20% of the 50Ah capacity. The idea is the full cell with rapidly climb to a high voltage and reach the 14.6v or what ever cut off voltage they claim the battery can handle. 3 cells at 3.6v safe max leaves one cell hitting 3.8v for a short time once the high voltage cut off is reached. But 3 cells at 3.35v means one cell will reach 4.1v before the 14.6v limit is reached. Again, very short term if the charging rate is high, but it could be at the 4.1v or more for quite a long time if the charge rate was 1 or 2 amps and that would damage that cell. This is the reason cell voltage monitoring and cut off control is so important, even charging at 0.5 amps, the 3.6v in any single cell safety cut off is maintained so the cells are always protected from high or low voltage damage.

About all you can do is limit the max charging voltage to 13.8v so you have a big safety margin between the high cell and lower cell voltages. That way the minimal balancing circuit inside that battery will get the high cell back down over a few days and the lower cells can catch up. This does mean you might sometimes not have all the advertised capacity available because the capacity is only what the lowest cell is holding at the time, but better than wrecking a battery.

T1 Terry

Ron-D · Guru

Terry the amount of text you put here hundreds of words heaps of pages makes one glad we have agm biggrin for most here the huge majority of people would have agm ,there is not much here for us thanks to you Terry flogging your business ,agm is almost a bad word, best to start a new section for you called Terries lithium ,then we could get back to things that might help most people in my view.honestly Terry your over the top and I dont think Iam the only one that has that view ,if this post is out of line and this is a lithium only section of the forum I would be very surprised ,you were removed from another forum for good reason you seem to dominate everything ,its a real shame what could be a good section of a great forum being absolutely dominated,by one person !

-- Edited by Ron-D on Thursday 27th of June 2019 03:06:51 PM

El Gringo · Senior Member

Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang.
Hate, hate,hate hate,
Don't you ever get sick of spewing out soo much hate????

I had a look at your post history last night.
It's disgusting how you have done tirade after tirade to T1.
Why?

I can only say that if you did it to me you would have been in court long ago.
It's not just any one comment, it's the amount of hate spewing out of you towards t1 over so long a time.

You say you won't ever give up
Why, why, why.

One day you will choke on you on vomit.

Ron-D · Guru

Your a nut case.

El Gringo · Senior Member

BTW, I downloaded your complete post history.
It sickened me so much I couldn't read more than a few months worth.
But now I can use it if need be.

This is supposed to be the age of tolerance.
So many things that we were told were wrong when were growing up are now considered just fine.
Yet you disparage the most knowledgeable person on this (and many other) forum, why.
Because he share his insights and experience for free.
Because he doesn't just tell you what is needed, but explains why.

And the questing remains - WHY?
Jealousy?
Wrong advice received.
Just sticking up for OldTrack?

I have no idea why, please enlighten us all.

Whatever the case, their is no room for your crap on this or any other forum.
I come here to have a friendly good natured discussion with all sorts of people.
But you (and a few others) ruin it with your hate.

Dncwell · Veteran Member

Hello T1 Terry
I am looking to create a supplementary 12 volt in our motor home, I have a 5000w inverter coupled with 1000 watts of solar panel and a 160ah agm battery, not good enough.
What capacity lithium battery should I purchase to replace the agm?
Thank you,
Best regards,
Neil.

Ron-D · Guru

El Gringo wrote:
BTW, I downloaded your complete post history.
It sickened me so much I couldn't read more than a few months worth.
But now I can use it if need be.

This is supposed to be the age of tolerance.
So many things that we were told were wrong when were growing up are now considered just fine.
Yet you disparage the most knowledgeable person on this (and many other) forum, why.
Because he share his insights and experience for free.
Because he doesn't just tell you what is needed, but explains why.

And the questing remains - WHY?
Jealousy?
Wrong advice received.
Just sticking up for OldTrack?

I have no idea why, please enlighten us all.

Whatever the case, their is no room for your crap on this or any other forum.
I come here to have a friendly good natured discussion with all sorts of people.
But you (and a few others) ruin it with your hate.

You went behind my back and downloaded my complete history are now threatening me with riddulouse text because I dont like terry takeing over a section of an Internet forum,does anyone here agree with this post and the language associated with it ,if thats the feeling I will resign my membership.I have always tried to express my opinions in a proper manner we can have disagreements but hey thats the internet.

blaze · Guru

I don't often agree with you ron but I support your right to express those views. maybe the whole forum section should be deleted because it is often where there is personel attaxks
cheers
blaze

El Gringo · Senior Member

I'm not trying to force you out, just to get you to let go of your anger.
There is no place for the type of antagonism that you have demonstrated towards T1.
Perhaps the way I have treated you will show you how it feels to be singled out.
You are not alone in your attitude I know, but that doesn't in any way justify you.

BTW, it was you who took over this topic, in an effort to trap Terry into giving you a price for a Lithium system.
He actually gave you prices back in Dec 2017, but still you go on and on.
I know why you keep asking - if he gives you an answer you can then accuse him of selling on the forum.

When that didn't work you keep harping on that you have AGM and are very happy,
You have no idea how much joy that gives us all.
But just 'cause you are happy doesn't mean all others will be too.
This is the drum beat I am referring to.
I have no issue with you sharing you views, but to go on and on, really?

All you have to do is curb your anger.

blaze · Guru

so do you

cheers

blaze

El Gringo · Senior Member

Yes, your right Blaze.
I did see red, I have seen it many times before due to the same conduct and attitude on here and said nothing.
This time I reacted.

I have absolutely no ill feeling towards Ron as a person, and I didn't just single him out.
It just so happened that it was his comments that got me to react.
Their are a number of others it could have been, so I'm sorry if it seems I have a grudge against him personally.
I most certainly do not.

Neither am I saying that T1 is perfect, there is no doubt he is an evangelizer of sorts,
However as in all arguments, you argue the point, not the person.
This is my issue, it has become personal to a few people on here and it should stop.

So I do apologise to Ron if I have gone too far.
It seems I often get into trouble for standing up for the underdog.

yobarr · Guru

Dncwell wrote:
Hello T1 Terry
I am looking to create a supplementary 12 volt in our motor home, I have a 5000w inverter coupled with 1000 watts of solar panel and a 160ah agm battery, not good enough.
What capacity lithium battery should I purchase to replace the agm?
Thank you,
Best regards,
Neil.

Hi Neil.....this may or may not be of help,but with 1000 watts Solar you could easily power 500ah Lithium,I would say. I have 1700 watts panels and 540ah Lithium...powers whole van,including reverse cycle Mitsubishi 2.5kw AC/heater,microwave,175 litre fridge/freezer,frypans etc etc. The only gas appliance I have is a griller,which never gets used.Cheers

Noelpolar · Veteran Member

Ron-D wrote

I dont know how people have managed to survive all the years ,Terry you would not have a clue what caravanning is for most people ,your making out that people without all that lithium gear are doing it rough your not in the real world ,honestly we live and enjoy our van ,were living in a modern van not laying on dirt floor in a tent ,most new vans on market right now this very minute even ,that dont have lithium are not roughing it ,to imagine that its absolute stupidity lithium has certain advantages for some people thats about it,I noticed you did not quote any prices cant blame you for that its probably a ridiculous amount to gain a more advanced charging system that were easily living without...

What an awful reply..... given Terry went to some trouble responding to your questions.