Just wanted to hear any info on lithium house banks. how is every ones going ?

I installed a 270 AH LiFePO4 house bank in 2012, using 8 X 135 AH.cells
Solar Panels are controlled by a "Roc Solid Powerstar" MPPT Controler.
No fancy cell balancing, only a Junsi Electronic CellLog 8s for individual cell monitoring.( a few bucks on ebay)
I ensured that all cells were balanced before installation by leaving them connected in parallel for a day, and have had no issues since the day they were installed.

I think they are brilliant and would not go back to batteries with 2oth century technology.

To be honest I no nothing about them yet But hopefully sometime next year I will once I have her sailing. But I need to start somewhere .
Without knowing Id guess a existing wind gen could be connected into a Life po4 house bank with some sort of suitable charge controller.
The same for solar panels at the moment sitting on the hard I have a 60 watt semi flexible panel wired to a Jaycar type MPPT 340 watt controler.
Phil at Fleming wind vanes is making me a solar arch which has stern rails built in plus poles for two wind gens.
Should make an outrageous H28 but need the power for living aboard. Plus some shade in the cockpit up north as well

like the in line mizzen masts hg

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boty said..
like the in line mizzen masts hg

MMMMMMM might make a nice twin gaffer Boty

That might be a really old lithium battery. I don't think they are built like that anymore. The ones I see all seem to have the single cells stacked with aluminium end plates. I have bought a few of the cells off eBay to power phone chargers/torches etc. The eBay seller just buys new batteries and tears them down and sells the individual cells. The lithium battery in my race car is just charged by the Nippon Denso alternator [Suzuki Swift/daihatsu etc] or an ordinary $5 2 amp battery charger from a garage sale. Brilliant bit of kit. For my yacht I have two lead acid batteries mounted low which are part of the ballast. I would not hesitate to install lithium batteries else where in the yacht where power is required, chart table etc for electronics.

That alternator in your race car can or have you reduced its out put
The Winston cells I'm looking at need less volts for charging than the normal 14.2 more like 13.8 would be ok even less


Been meaning to take pictures of these resettable fuses
These are starting to appear on a few new machines lately

The battery has it's own circuit. The battery just floats at 13.8v.

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Ramona said..
The battery has it's own circuit. The battery just floats at 13.8v.

Are you saying a alternator that runs on a conventional wet cell battery at 14.2 volts when connected to a lithium 300ah house battery will run at 13.8 volts.
When I looked at the winston web site and the seller in Oz suggests
Voltage Operating Window The factory say 2.8v to 4.0v. I think it is better to stay between 3.1v and 3.7. Ideal is 3.5v per cell. Some 12v solar regulators are capable of 14.4v / 4 cells = 3.6v. But some only go to 13.8v /4 cells = 3.45. These voltages are all good. There is very little capacity above 3.45v and so above that the voltages rise much quicker. The new charts don’t show it. Here is an old LFP chart. You can see that at 3.65v and 3.75v the capacity difference would not be more than 5ah, but in the middle band of the discharge curve, the capacity difference is much greater, even though the voltages appear to be closely balanced.

Ive forward the email to you Ramona

Found these images of the batteries and regulator if anyone is interested.The small display above the regulator is the cell monitor.

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HG02 said..

Ramona said..
The battery has it's own circuit. The battery just floats at 13.8v.

Are you saying a alternator that runs on a conventional wet cell battery at 14.2 volts when connected to a lithium 300ah house battery will run at 13.8 volts.
When I looked at the winston web site and the seller in Oz suggests
Voltage Operating Window The factory say 2.8v to 4.0v. I think it is better to stay between 3.1v and 3.7. Ideal is 3.5v per cell. Some 12v solar regulators are capable of 14.4v / 4 cells = 3.6v. But some only go to 13.8v /4 cells = 3.45. These voltages are all good. There is very little capacity above 3.45v and so above that the voltages rise much quicker. The new charts don’t show it. Here is an old LFP chart. You can see that at 3.65v and 3.75v the capacity difference would not be more than 5ah, but in the middle band of the discharge curve, the capacity difference is much greater, even though the voltages appear to be closely balanced.

Ive forward the email to you Ramona

The car battery is 12volts. The cells are arranged to provide an output of 12 volts so the battery is wired up the same as a normal lead battery in a car. The alternator does not know it's a lithium battery. These batteries are full of individual cells 65mm x 18mm. The ones in Libran's photo would have the same cells. The battery banks for solar could be a lot of different voltages. For a boat it's probably easier to stick with 12v. The photo is my battery, weighs 1.5 kilos.

HI HG,
My battery bank (400ah) has been great , after a month of the boat being left at marina to fend for itself ( no shore power) , I plugged the battery charger in and found the batteries to be at ~90% , we leave the Indel upright 12 volt fridge freezer on 24/7 and bilge pumps live. we spend 21 days on it in November and only charged up batteries from Generator while running water maker .Built in BMS controls everything, we just had to adjust the solar panel regulator to limit the volts coming in... At this point in time cannot fault the lithium's on anything ,including running anchor windless and Samsung 12 volt microwave.

I basically followed this guy on Nimrods blog.. psyberspace.com.au/lithium.html and EV Works were easy to deal with, my batteries came already made up in 2 x 200hr packages which made it real easy .

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DAMA said..
HI HG,
My battery bank (400ah) has been great , after a month of the boat being left at marina to fend for itself ( no shore power) , I plugged the battery charger in and found the batteries to be at ~90% , we leave the Indel upright 12 volt fridge freezer on 24/7 and bilge pumps live. we spend 21 days on it in November and only charged up batteries from Generator while running water maker .Built in BMS controls everything, we just had to adjust the solar panel regulator to limit the volts coming in... At this point in time cannot fault the lithium's on anything ,including running anchor windless and Samsung 12 volt microwave.

I basically followed this guy on Nimrods blog.. psyberspace.com.au/lithium.html and EV Works were easy to deal with, my batteries came already made up in 2 x 200hr packages which made it real easy .

Many thanks for the post Dama with the included link it makes me more comfortable with going ahead with these batteries . My main concern has been charging and battery management . I've been considering either two choices either 300 ah or 400 am . For my little boat I think the 300 ah would be enough

With 300 hr system you will be laughing.... you won't regret it that's for sure

A 300 AH Lithium battery will give you the equivalent of approx 600AH in Lead acid because of the greater depth of discharge as well as a better top up at full charge.
Only way to go IMHO and you will get the benefit of lower weight for a smaller boat.

Thank you very much gentlemen

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Libran said..
Found these images of the batteries and regulator if anyone is interested.The small display above the regulator is the cell monitor.

Thats a nice MPPT controller Libran lots of options when you're setting it up from the PDF manual.
Question for you how many panels have you and what's there size and voltage output If I may ask?

HI hg,
sorry I have taken so long to respond but I missed your question when I last read your post.
The solar panes are 3 X 80 watt BP panels that are probably at least 10 to 12 years old. They are wired in parallel as per the original installation by the previous owner who had it connected to a fairly basic 12 v (nom) solarex controller.
I upgraded to the present regulator when I installed the LiFePo4 batteries a couple of years ago. The panels put out about 19 volts from memory on a good day but the system would probably work better if the panels were wired in series which would give them an output of approx 50 volts. This will give better harvesting of panel output via the MPPT controller and enable charging earlier in the morning and later at afternoons when you would still get a series output greater than 13 volt to enable charging if required.
I think the regulator was the best I could find when I did my research a couple of years ago. I have my fridge connected thru the load circuit on the controller and it has a disconnect function if the battery voltage drops below the preprogrammed voltage.
It also has a datalogging capability which enables me to log and also download the daily total AH in and AH out as well as max and min voltage each day.
.
Happy to give you a call to further discuss if I can be of any help.

Cheers