Seeking Feedback on Lithium Battery Conversion Plan

Wow that's quite a system. Is that in a sprinter? You must have upgraded the alternator??
I have contemplated ditching the Onan in our RT and using that space for batteries. Space is a premium in the Chevy Express van. Currently have 200 amp hours of lithium in the original RT battery bays.
 
Wow that's quite a system. Is that in a sprinter? You must have upgraded the alternator??
I have contemplated ditching the Onan in our RT and using that space for batteries. Space is a premium in the Chevy Express van. Currently have 200 amp hours of lithium in the original RT battery bays.
Ours is an 07 Express 190 Popular Roadtrek so well aware of the difficulties :)

We had an AGM system between mostly stock and where we are now. It was 440ah of Lifeline AGM batteries underneath where the generator was. We ran that system for about 8 years and were happy with it and it caused no issues for us. We had gotten to the point of testing the no plug in but using the micowave, Instant pot, hair dryer, curling iron routine when the batteries got to aging out.

It would have been easy to just replace the batteries but the engineer in me wanted to see just how lithium systems really behave, as I felt I could never believe the ridiculous claims of the sellers of them or the user reviews that they were "perfect".

I put 3 SOK 206ah 12v batteries inside under out home built full time bed on the driver side that took about 14X28" of space. I passed on underbody because of lithiums temperature intolerance for both hot or cold. I was able to get the existing high quality charging equipment to work OK with it, except the engine charging second alternator. I installed a Wakespeed remote regulator and also had to add a Victron battery monitor to control it. It has worked very well over the last 3 years.
 
Ours is an 07 Express 190 Popular Roadtrek so well aware of the difficulties :)

We had an AGM system between mostly stock and where we are now. It was 440ah of Lifeline AGM batteries underneath where the generator was. We ran that system for about 8 years and were happy with it and it caused no issues for us. We had gotten to the point of testing the no plug in but using the micowave, Instant pot, hair dryer, curling iron routine when the batteries got to aging out.

It would have been easy to just replace the batteries but the engineer in me wanted to see just how lithium systems really behave, as I felt I could never believe the ridiculous claims of the sellers of them or the user reviews that they were "perfect".

I put 3 SOK 206ah 12v batteries inside under out home built full time bed on the driver side that took about 14X28" of space. I passed on underbody because of lithiums temperature intolerance for both hot or cold. I was able to get the existing high quality charging equipment to work OK with it, except the engine charging second alternator. I installed a Wakespeed remote regulator and also had to add a Victron battery monitor to control it. It has worked very well over the last 3 years.
Okay that makes sense. So far I've held off on making the bed permanent but so far we have only used it as a lounge/ dinette once.
So far 200AH has been sufficient for us. My original motivation was to replace the underpowered inverter with a pure sign 2K watt that would power the microwave.
Also replaced the refrigerator with a dometic 12 volt compressor unit and added 350 w of flexible solar panels.
I was a career mechanic so I felt confident to do that project DIY but I think it would be prohibitive to someone without the skill set.
That's why I like the idea of the drop-in victron unit because someone without much knowledge could convert to lithium which is a real wonderful upgrade.
I have done RVs since the '60s and house batteries have always been a real Thorn. I also sailed full-time for 10 years and that would have been so much nicer if we didn't have to deal with lead acid batteries back then. I think we went through three sets golf cart batteries on that boat.
 
We ran a system very similar to what you have for several years. It was 260ah of Trojan golf cart wet cells with a Blue Sea charger and Samlex 1500 watt PSW inverter. We had 200 and then 300 watts of solar of glass cells permanently mounted on the roof. We have even before then had a compressor frig, which was an Isotherm 3.0cf model.

We were able to run the microwave until the low voltage would kick out when the batteries were below 50% SOC. We could go about 3 days if moderately careful in horrible sun. We only had to go for a drive once after 3 days of heavy overcast and drizzle in a semi shaded site at Devils Tower Wyoming.

One thing that I think, some others don't, is that the idea of a true drop in lithium to replace lead acid is really a statement that has a "but" attached to it. As in "but, you can't let them see high temps like they can in side pod or uncooled unbody installs, you can't charge them when the batteries are below freezing, you can't let them go to total discharge, you have to be careful to not overcharge them, you can't ignore getting them to balance regularly, you have to provide for a BMS lockout reacivation method, etc.

Depending on where you live, how you camp, etc some may not need to be addressed, others might be needed. Lithium certainly has some advantages, but not nearly, IMO, as many as the sellers claim.

Less weight per amp hour, absolutely true.

4-10X the number of lifetime recharge cycles, probably a very gross exaggeration as they seem to last about 7-8 years in systems we have seen so far which is similar to good AGMs.

Faster recharging at 1 to 3C charge rates compared to .2C for lead acid. Most of the current lithium specs recommend .2-.4C charging with some going a bit higher. Very few at 1C even. The taper current at near full charge does happen faster in lithium so may 1 hour or so instead of 5+ hours to 100% full with AGMs.

Don't need to charge full all the time. This is very true and midrange charging is great with them. The problem is that most drop in batteries require you to change full get the necessary cell balancing to activate and that negates any midrange improvements for many users.

I often get asked if I would do the lithium sway again, now that I know more about how it all works, or doesn't.

When we did the swap, lithium was dropping but still expensive. Lifeline AGMs would have been about $2400 for 440ah and the 618ah of SOK lithium was about $3000. The lithium install, to work like I wanted it to took nearly $1000 of other parts and probably 75 hours of work. The cost didn't bother me then or now because the whole thing was basically written of as an educational project and they are never cost effictive.

Would I choose to do it if knew what I know now, yes I would. Would I do it differently now, yes I would and I have been playing with more cost effective and easier to install and control ways ever since as that is my nature with projects. My current thinking is that there probably is a way to use simple, non smart, components to do the job at least as well, maybe better, then our system turned out. I doubt I will do it on ours, which is working very well, but it is an interesting thing to think about.
 
We ran a system very similar to what you have for several years. It was 260ah of Trojan golf cart wet cells with a Blue Sea charger and Samlex 1500 watt PSW inverter. We had 200 and then 300 watts of solar of glass cells permanently mounted on the roof. We have even before then had a compressor frig, which was an Isotherm 3.0cf model.

We were able to run the microwave until the low voltage would kick out when the batteries were below 50% SOC. We could go about 3 days if moderately careful in horrible sun. We only had to go for a drive once after 3 days of heavy overcast and drizzle in a semi shaded site at Devils Tower Wyoming.

One thing that I think, some others don't, is that the idea of a true drop in lithium to replace lead acid is really a statement that has a "but" attached to it. As in "but, you can't let them see high temps like they can in side pod or uncooled unbody installs, you can't charge them when the batteries are below freezing, you can't let them go to total discharge, you have to be careful to not overcharge them, you can't ignore getting them to balance regularly, you have to provide for a BMS lockout reacivation method, etc.

Depending on where you live, how you camp, etc some may not need to be addressed, others might be needed. Lithium certainly has some advantages, but not nearly, IMO, as many as the sellers claim.

Less weight per amp hour, absolutely true.

4-10X the number of lifetime recharge cycles, probably a very gross exaggeration as they seem to last about 7-8 years in systems we have seen so far which is similar to good AGMs.

Faster recharging at 1 to 3C charge rates compared to .2C for lead acid. Most of the current lithium specs recommend .2-.4C charging with some going a bit higher. Very few at 1C even. The taper current at near full charge does happen faster in lithium so may 1 hour or so instead of 5+ hours to 100% full with AGMs.

Don't need to charge full all the time. This is very true and midrange charging is great with them. The problem is that most drop in batteries require you to change full get the necessary cell balancing to activate and that negates any midrange improvements for many users.

I often get asked if I would do the lithium sway again, now that I know more about how it all works, or doesn't.

When we did the swap, lithium was dropping but still expensive. Lifeline AGMs would have been about $2400 for 440ah and the 618ah of SOK lithium was about $3000. The lithium install, to work like I wanted it to took nearly $1000 of other parts and probably 75 hours of work. The cost didn't bother me then or now because the whole thing was basically written of as an educational project and they are never cost effictive.

Would I choose to do it if knew what I know now, yes I would. Would I do it differently now, yes I would and I have been playing with more cost effective and easier to install and control ways ever since as that is my nature with projects. My current thinking is that there probably is a way to use simple, non smart, components to do the job at least as well, maybe better, then our system turned out. I doubt I will do it on ours, which is working very well, but it is an interesting thing to think about.
Based on your experience with Lithium vs AGM did Lithium changed your camping routine? My worries for changing to lithium is that the system complexity resulting from AGM to Lithium changeover wouldn’t pass a grandma test which my current AGM system would.
 
Based on your experience with Lithium vs AGM did Lithium changed your camping routine? My worries for changing to lithium is that the system complexity resulting from AGM to Lithium changeover wouldn’t pass a grandma test which my current AGM system would.
That is a really good question that needs to always be asked.

The goal of the change was to get rid of the long top of charge time of the AGM and expand the usable range of the inverter vs SOC for the microwave, and we did do that fine.

We did not have adapt any of the way we were using the van, although it did allow us to use the microwave, instant pot, wife's hair drier deeper into the battery SOC. Only gains were positive even with mid range charging we do.

But, we did increase ah capacity by 50% which in itself increases usability. If you go to 200ah of lithium instead of AGM., you will very likely t be able to run the microwave some and deeper into the SOC curve, but ah used are ah used so they need to be replaced more quickly in a small bank system than a large bank system.

Different use patterns are individual so no two alike so hard to predict but I would think you could get 2-3 days on 200ah before the need to recharge by some method. If the sun is good you could go longer, though.

A thing to remember is that we are overdesined in every way so we have a huge cushion on power use, and need to emergency charge to get usability back. This was intentional and balanced against cost and implementation work required.

Bottom line, I think, is that you can plunk in lithium into a system and charge to 14.4v-14.6v every time and run them near empty and be good for XXX amount of time. Lithium is getting less expensive so that isn't all bad all the time, based on choices. You can also spend more, get more capacity and charge control and get longer trouble free life. No perfect one size fits all solution. My nature is to make systems as good as possible within budget and that is what we have. Somebody else's budget and desires may be different, though.
 

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