basic battery upgrade questions

AnOldUR

elbolillo said:

If you were to fully charge and discharge your Battle Born Batteries every day, they would last you between 10 and 15 years. With a 10-year warranty, our lithium batteries will keep you powered for years to come.

Should this be true of all of the newer LiFePO4's with good BMS's or only Battle Born?

SLJ

Charging to 100% when camping isn't a problem. You don't have to sit there and watch your solar charging and cut it off when your batteries reach 90%. Leaving them at 100% for extended periods or in storage isn't recommended. Daily use charging and discharging when camping won't shorten their life quicker than they are designed for as they are under constant use and not sitting at 100%.

elbolillo

AnOldUR said:

elbolillo said:

If you were to fully charge and discharge your Battle Born Batteries every day, they would last you between 10 and 15 years. With a 10-year warranty, our lithium batteries will keep you powered for years to come.

Should this be true of all of the newer LiFePO4's with good BMS's or only Battle Born?

That is a good question. It would seem logical that all LiFePO4s with good BMS's would have similar performance. I only quoted BB as those are what I have. Regardless, I don't believe that modern LiFePO4 batteries need so much hand holding.

Hammick

elbolillo said:

If you were to fully charge and discharge your Battle Born Batteries every day, they would last you between 10 and 15 years. With a 10-year warranty, our lithium batteries will keep you powered for years to come.

I feel like an idiot giving advice to an expert.  I had no idea you were with Battleborn.  The reason I use a float voltage is so the sun is powering our loads during the day rather than our batteries.  This at our offgrid place with 230v well pump, dryer, washer, kitchen appliance, garage stuff, etc.

Is the Victron solar charge controller on the TAB able to power loads without having a float voltage set?  I'm guessing it works the same as our Schneider solar charge controllers and needs float to power loads from the sun.

Probably irrelevant while camping in a TAB unless you have the lithium upgrade and are running the AC during a sunny day off the Victron Multiplus.

Out of curiosity how long should absorb be set on the Battleborns?

Marceline

Maxcamp8 said:

@Marceline, the hot water bottles sound like a great idea the next time I camp without the wife!
Heating pad is for my back as spinal debility takes over from a career in Construction.

Ouch. There are also battery operated heating pads, like  this. I don't know how well they work (how warm they get or how long they run) but the advantage would be that if you tend to drive around during the day you could recharge it from your car battery instead of running the heating pad from your trailer battery.

Maxcamp8

@Marceline, thanks for the heating pad tip.  We do have a 12v pad as well as two 120v pads.


Here is the link to my 2022 battery upgrade:

https://tab-rv.vanillacommunity.com/discussion/comment/182995/#Comment_182995

I mapped out the TV and solar charge upgrades this time around and will look for feedback. Going to post in a new thread as am no longer on the topic of just upgrading batteries.  Lots to learn from all the forum members here, much appreciated.  Continuing discussion of DC upgrades here:

https://tab-rv.vanillacommunity.com/discussion/18077/planning-dc-charging-upgrades-solar-and-dc-dc#latest

elbolillo

Hammick said:

elbolillo said:

If you were to fully charge and discharge your Battle Born Batteries every day, they would last you between 10 and 15 years. With a 10-year warranty, our lithium batteries will keep you powered for years to come.

I feel like an idiot giving advice to an expert.  I had no idea you were with Battleborn.  The reason I use a float voltage is so the sun is powering our loads during the day rather than our batteries.  This at our offgrid place with 230v well pump, dryer, washer, kitchen appliance, garage stuff, etc.

Is the Victron solar charge controller on the TAB able to power loads without having a float voltage set?  I'm guessing it works the same as our Schneider solar charge controllers and needs float to power loads from the sun.

Probably irrelevant while camping in a TAB unless you have the lithium upgrade and are running the AC during a sunny day off the Victron Multiplus.

Out of curiosity how long should absorb be set on the Battleborns?

I am anything but an expert. Absorption is set at 30 min per battery. 2 hours for my 4 batteries.

These are the suggested settings from Battleborn’s site:

• Absorption voltage: 14.6 volts (acceptable range is 14.4 to 14.6 volts) 
• Absorption Time: The recommended settings for our lithium batteries is half an hour per 100ah of LiFePO4 battery (for example if you have 2 -100ah batteries select 1 hour). 
• Float Voltage:  13.5 volts (13.6 volts or lower is acceptable for LiFePO4 batteries) 
• Equalization voltage: 14.4 volts (you do not need to equalize Lithium ion, you will have equalize turned off, but incase it ever runs a cycle the batteries will be fine at this voltage) 
• Temperature Compensation:  should be disabled on Lithium Deep Cycle batteries because they do not need to be compensated, leave this off. 
• Low Temperature cut-off: Our Battle Born Batteries have low temperature charging protection built into the battery, it’s monitored by our Battery Management system which is also built in.  You can leave this off too, some other brands do not protect your battery against damage from low temp charging, we do, we have got you covered.