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Battle Born Batteries LiFePO4 Deep Cycle Battery - 100Ah 12v Lithium Battery w/Built-In BMS - 3000-5000 Deep Cycle Rechargeable Battery - RV/Camper, Marine, Overland/Van, and Off Grid Applications?
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You don’t want to buy that battery, if it’s for RV use you should get something designed for RVs, like this:
Very high quality, designed for RV use with 12v charging systems and 12v draw. They are going to be a lot easier to adapt for RV use. You can still use them in parallel etc.
> LiFePO4
Jesus Christ i look up a 100 amp hour 12 volt battery.
https://www.amazon.com/LiFePO4-volt-Deep-Cycle-Battery/dp/B06XX197GJ
why are they so expensive? I would only want to pay 1/10th of that price.
Yes the cycles are 4000 cycles as compared to lead acid which is 500 cycles.
But my sealed lead acid batteries i bought in Jan 2014 and they need replacing now, so i got 4.5 years out of them (or 1650 cycles), which is much higher than the 500 cycles recommended.
I have 6 deep cycle batteries so cannot afford to change to LiFePO4
>some light use.
What do you mean by this? What have you been running? You mentioned a /3000 Watt/ inverter. This is not 'light use' for those batteries if you are using anywhere near even half the power rating of that inverter.
If you need a 3000 Watt inverter on 12 volt batteries, that's 250 Amps draw if you're maxing that inverter out. That's insane.
But, I get it, RV is 12-volt, you can't fit a large battery bank (physical size) because obvious reasons, etc. ...
You need Lithium batteries to take that kind of abuse in the form factor you want. Go buy two 100 Ah, 12-volt Lithium (LiFePO4) 'drop in replacement' batteries from a company like Battleborn or similar. It'll cost you a pretty penny but you can just have the two in parallel (+ to +, - to -) and drop them in as a replacement. And there will be a warranty, too. :) They'll likely fit with little to no adjustment in your current battery box as well. :) (Measure to make sure before you buy!)
https://www.amazon.com/LiFePO4-Volt-Deep-Cycle-Battery/dp/B06XX197GJ/
Note, I do not work for or represent the company who produces these batteries, nor do I own any, but others seem to have liked them just fine, and LiFePO4 with built-in safeties is what you want.
Note, you will have to make sure you charge controller is set properly as per the manufacturer's recommendations.
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>Should we disconnect the controller when we remove the panels?
No need. But disconnect the panels first if you are going to remove the batteries to replace them.
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>The controller has been on during the night and showing a quick loss of % when it gets dark.
Normal. Renogy's battery meter is a voltage based state of charge on those ones. It's complete BS. It means nearly nothing. It generally treats 'float' as 'full', so of course when the sun goes down it drops like a rock.
The lithium batteries are usually a LOT lighter.. I mean .. here's a MASSIVE 100ah battery that's 30lbs..
https://www.amazon.com/LiFePO4-Volt-Deep-Cycle-Battery/dp/B06XX197GJ/
Definately NOT cheap though.
https://www.amazon.com/LiFePO4-Volt-Deep-Cycle-Battery/dp/B06XX197GJ
I was thinking 3-4 of these?
Also I would want to be able to charge via the alternator as well.
The problem is not the cost of solar, it's the batteries. It's no good to have electricity for 4-10 hours a day and none the rest of the time or when it's cloudy or rainy. We need a way to store it.
To put the momentous amount of energy needed, let's consider a dam a big battery, because that's what it essentially is. The three gorges dam, biggest in the world, dwarves the Hoover dam, already gigantic. It produces 20x the electricity of the Hoover! And when it was designed, it was supposed to produce 10% of China's electricity. When completed in 2011, it ran to spec, but China had grown so much it only produced 1.7% of China's electricity! And it's probably even smaller now. And that 1.7%, when figured into total energy, it's in the neighborhood of 0.34%. That means about 300 Gorges Dams worth of batteries to run China alone. I'd be surprised if we had the material to build a single Gorges worth but whatever.
I was watching a youtube video of a guy who stuck 50,000 pounds ($65,000) into his house in the UK for solar, tesla solar walls, etc. It powers up his two teslas (he doesn't drive much, figure 1kwh every 2 miles) and runs a few things, but not even his big appliances (dryer, stove, oven, A/C). Shaking my head.
Now, on top of that, electricity is only 20% of the energy used in civilization. For an average person, there's also home heating and transportation. Outside of that person, there's industry, agriculture, commericial heating, etc.
Besides the reduced sunlight hours in winter, because of angle, there's also simply less energy reaching the ground even at high noon. You need roughly 6x the panels in January compared to July, to match hourly rate of electricity and then even more when figuring in the sunlight window (half the sunlight time, let's double it to 12x!) And this is only electricity, not heating which is much more intensive.
I derive my costs from this:
A Tesla powerwall is just a bit over half that price, if you can get one. Either battery will have to be replaced about after a decade.
I see solar going really well in Southern California, but forget the PNW or NE. And what about the South with Hurricanes? And poor people where Tesla Powerball/battery infrastructure will be costly, theft liability?
The problem is that renewables are not there. Solar will be nothing until batteries are cheap and store lots of energy.
Think we'll get there? Dams are basically large water batteries of solar energy (rain is a result of evaporation). The Three Gorges Dam in China is the largest in the world, it produces 20x more electricity than the Hoover Dam. When it was built, it was supposed to supply about 10% of China's electricity. It met spec when completed by 2011 but by then it was only 1.7% of China's energy.
Have you seen the price of batteries lately? I don't think I could power a tiny airconditioner overnight with less than $10,000 worth of battery. Wait, let's do the math.
Let's say small, a rooftop van A/C uses about 1,300w. Say 10 hours (overnight sleeping, plus an hour or two nighttime whatever), that's 108 AH (120v AC). That converts to 1,192 DC.
So 12 100 AH Lithium batteries (normal batteries you'd have to double since you don't want to run them under 50% capacity). Now, add a 13th & 14th battery because you don't want to run lithium down to 0% (lifetime impact) and conversion losses. That should keep you above 10% overnight.
It'll take OVER $13,000 of batteries to run a dinky little A/C overnight. Not to mention heating, not to mention lighting, not to mention other appliances. And god forbid a dryer! That's Bill Gate's territory.
That's why renewables are a joke.
Sources and calculators used.
Disclaimer: I'm a total noob. Take everything I say with a grain of salt, and verify each of my claims with your own research.
> a minimum of $550 for non AGM batteries.
Really? That much? A local golf cart dealer sells Trojan T-105 225 Ah 6-volt batteries (PDF) for $110. If you had 4 of them, you'd have 450 Ah at 12V (series-parallel) for $440. These are top of the line batteries.
I'm in the same boat as you. Trying to decide what to buy. I think I'm going to go flooded because for the following reasons:
- Half the price
- You can directly measure their charge with a hydrometer
- More resistant to being overcharged
- Relatively easy to equalize if they become unbalanced
The price thing is a big one. Saving hundreds of dollars is a lot. Plus, if you royally screw them up because you discharged them more than you realized, or overcharged them a ton, or whatever, replacing the whole bank of them will, again, only cost half as much. It's like having one get-out-of-jail-free card. I've read a lot of people say that your first solar battery bank should be flooded because you're probably going to ruin them within two years.
With a properly configured 3- or 4-stage charge controller, flooded batteries shouldn't outgas hardly at all. You only really have to worry about a malfunctioning controller or similar event where the batteries get overcharged and outgas a lot. Of course, the equalization process will make them outgas, but that's a planned event, and you shouldn't have to do that very often.
As for venting, I was thinking of mounting the batteries near the rear of the van along with the solar controller and inverter. That way they are easy to access for watering, and I can just open the doors when equalizing. As for venting, I'm not sure yet.
You probably already know the advantages of AGM batteries, but here are some:
- Can be charged 5 times faster.
- Not really sure this matters unless you want to make quick pit stops where you charge them with shore power or with a powerful generator in a short time.
- Low self-discharge
- But it's not like you're not going to be using them and charging them routinely.
- No maintenance (this is the big one)
Downsides:
- Much more sensitive to overcharging.
- They have a catalyst in the caps to recombine the hydrogen and oxygen into water, but if the amount of gas exceeds how fast the catalyst can perform, they will outgas and you can't replace it. (Well, you can, but it's really hard to know how much water to add without special tools, and replacement caps are expensive.)
- Difficult to equalize, or so I've read.
All that being said, I'm still tempted to buy AGM myself. If you buy a very good charge controller, and get all the settings right on it, and don't abuse the batteries, they should last a long time with no maintenance. By "very good" I mean the charge controller should do the following:
- Measure the actual amps getting into the battery using a shunt
- A shunt is a metal conductor with a low (and known) resistance placed in series between the charge controller and the battery. A sensor connected to the shunt can measure the voltage drop across it and know exactly how much current is moving into (or out of) the battery.
- Account for voltage drop on the wires leading to the battery by having a remote voltage meter at the batteries.
- This will allow the charge controller to increase or decrease the voltage to hit just the right number.
- Have a temperature sensor on the batteries which it uses to adjust the charging rate.
- It will raise or lower the voltage based on the battery temperature, since hot batteries require less voltage to avoid overcharge and cold require more to charge.
I was thinking of buying this controller.
Back to batteries, the easy answer is just buy four of these!
Glad the info helped! Let's say you're using 100 watts (Xbox with TV). It sounds like you may be using only 90 watts, but we want to allow for electrical inefficiencies so we add 10% to your usage, so in this case that's 99 watts. Let's say 100 watts for simplicity and for a little extra margin.
The GoalZero website says their battery has 280.8 amp hours (Ah). You don't want to discharge a lithium battery more than 90%, so your real capacity is 252.7 Ah (280.8 * 0.9). Your system uses 8.34 amps (100 watts / 12 volts = 8.34 amps). To find out how many hours you can power your system on this, divide your Ah by amps, so 252.7Ah / 8.34A = 30.3 hours...which means your math is correct :) Keep in mind that it will take around 9 hours to recharge this battery.
A little more math: You can get a 100Ah lithium battery for $950, a 600 watt pure sine inverter for $220, and a lithium battery charger for $175. Throw in $20 for cabling and you're up to $1,365, so let's say $1,400 if there's any extra shipping. That's less than half the cost of the GoalZero and you'd get 10.8 hours of play from it, and recharge time would be 3.3 hours.
If you get two batteries, your numbers would be $2,315, 21.6 hours of use, with a recharge time of 6.6 hours.
I'm not saying you shouldn't get the GoalZero since it may be the perfect solution for your needs. Just trying to show you other possible choices.
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