Li-thiiii-um.... continued.

[John in Santa Cruz]

Originally Posted by tacchino

I like the collection of 12V plugs. Where did you source that? Don’t suppose those USB ports are power delivery are they?

oh, for my new USB C PD devices (a tablet, my cell, my wife's cell, etc), I have been using an Anker dual 18W PD cigar plug (it can do 18W on each USB C port) at the dinette. works well enough for now. I may eventually upgrade. but my new XPS13 laptop wants 65W PD, where do we stop? My wife's 10 year old XPS15 wants its own Dell 90W barrel connector, but there is little point in bothering with 12V supplies since we now have a high efficiency pure-sine inverter (about 1 amp at idle). Using the inverter to charge our ebikes and stuff, too, even run the coffee grinder and maker, heh.

[BobG]

Before you know it you will be running your air conditioner on the inverter to cool down at bed time until the MaxFan can take over as the ambient temperature drops after the sundown.

You might want to run the batteries down to 5% to see how much capacity they are currently delivering. Also, to see how it goes for multiple day recover using the solar.

[John in Santa Cruz]

as of mid day today, the batts are down to 65% according to the SmartShunt. I'll be noting the total power consumption and switching the solar back on this evening.

[John in Santa Cruz]

so switched the solar on after dark last night. early morning before the sun was up, the batts were down to 53%, this after 3 days and 4 nights without any charging with normal usage.

the morning started out quite overcast, it didn't start to clear til 11 or so. total solar today is 2.09kWH, with a Pmax if 410W. tonight, the battery is up to 76%, so one mostly sunny day got me half of the 3.5 days of discharge.

unless I was nuts enough to try and run an AC off an inverter, I do believe I have enough solar. this one 360W LG NeonR panel is performing as good as can be expected, I got 5.9 hours of the full 360W equivalent, and thats with an overcast morning.

[John in Santa Cruz]

p.s I wanna know how a 360W rated solar panel can have a daily Pmax of 410 watts, heh. previous highest I saw was 390. These LG NeonR panels, which are intended for building use, are awesome efficient when coupled with a Victron MPPT controller!!

open circuit on these is like 42 V, and at max wattage output they are around 36V. so the MPPT turns 36V 8-10 amp into 13.x V at ~ 25-30 amps.

[John in Santa Cruz]

and it hit 100% charge at about 5pm today, and then generated a 100 more watt hours running the fan before dark. total solar output today was 2100 watt*hours.

so less than 2 mostly sunny days to fully charge the battery from 53%, which was 3.5 days usage.

[John in Santa Cruz]

Another update. 3 days, 3 nights, trailer in deep shade, used 50% of the battery capacity, and this included using the inverter to run a coffee mill and drip coffee maker each day.... The coffee maker drew about 120 A for about 6 minutes each time.



(One pot of coffee. My maker does a presoak hence the spike at the start, this emulates a hand pour)

[Effie]

Isn't it nice how we can see what the system is doing in any given time. I'm a bit surprised to se the voltage drop to under 12.5v, considering it's about 60a from each battery.

[John in Santa Cruz]

Originally Posted by Effie

Isn't it nice how we can see what the system is doing in any given time. I'm a bit surprised to se the voltage drop to under 12.5v, considering it's about 60a from each battery.

I need to upgrade that wiring. the battery wiring was done long before I thought of adding the inverter, and there's about 18" of AWG4 between each battery negative and the shunt's input. Note the batteries were already close to 50% discharged at that point, too.

[John in Santa Cruz]

this winter so far, my solar has NOT been keeping up with daily load... I've only been getting 300 WH per day or so due to early and late tree shade and generally low angle. Over a week and a half, the charge state dropped some each night, partially recovered in the day, such that it was down to like 80%...

It did fine in San Diego a couple weeks ago, at Fiddlers Cove Marina and RV Park (USN MWR), but it was clear every day with horizon to horizon clear skies, and thats like 5 degrees latitude farther south and no trees.



(of course, the joke is, we had full hookups there... but I shut off the DC converter to see how the solar would do, and it did just fine... about 2 weeks after getting home, I plugged the trailer into the converter since my driveway sun is lacking

[GTR guy]

After reading through the details of what many of you have done with your lithium set ups, I am more confused than when my journey started. I would appreciate some advice that I can't seem to locate here or in other online forums but imagine someone here can cover this off the top of their head.

It appears that folks go one of two routes with their upgrades, get enough capacity to run the trailer almost as though it were on shore power or just put in a lithium battery in place of a lead acid and live with the fact that they are not fully utilizing the benefits of a lithium battery. I am aiming to be between these two camps but not sure what I need to do to get there. All I want to do with lithium is run a couple of lights, the Maxair fan, another 12V fan somewhere in the trailer, the water pump when necessary and sometimes the blower in the furnace (although not often) and a 500 amp inverter so my wife can recharge her phone and computer. That said, I want to go days to a week without plugging in.

I just came home with my 21NE that has the lithium ready package which consists of Victron Orion-Tr-Smart 12/12 volt 18 amp isolated DC-DC charger and a WFCO Power Converter (model WF-8955-AD-WAGO) with an output of 13.6V DC and 55A. The lead acid battery is currently in the storage on the tongue but I intend to put a lithium battery under the dinette. No solar at the moment as my goal is to charge the battery at home before heading out and not needing to charge until I hit a site with electricity or I come home.

What do I need to add/upgrade to get a 100ah or 200ah lithium battery to fully charge and to charge as quickly as lithium batteries can? Do I need a shunt or would getting a battery with Bluetooth be sufficient?

[rubicon327]

Originally Posted by GTR guy

After reading through the details of what many of you have done with your lithium set ups, I am more confused than when my journey started. I would appreciate some advice that I can't seem to locate here or in other online forums but imagine someone here can cover this off the top of their head.

It appears that folks go one of two routes with their upgrades, get enough capacity to run the trailer almost as though it were on shore power or just put in a lithium battery in place of a lead acid and live with the fact that they are not fully utilizing the benefits of a lithium battery. I am aiming to be between these two camps but not sure what I need to do to get there. All I want to do with lithium is run a couple of lights, the Maxair fan, another 12V fan somewhere in the trailer, the water pump when necessary and sometimes the blower in the furnace (although not often) and a 500 amp inverter so my wife can recharge her phone and computer. That said, I want to go days to a week without plugging in.

I just came home with my 21NE that has the lithium ready package which consists of Victron Orion-Tr-Smart 12/12 volt 18 amp isolated DC-DC charger and a WFCO Power Converter (model WF-8955-AD-WAGO) with an output of 13.6V DC and 55A. The lead acid battery is currently in the storage on the tongue but I intend to put a lithium battery under the dinette. No solar at the moment as my goal is to charge the battery at home before heading out and not needing to charge until I hit a site with electricity or I come home.

What do I need to add/upgrade to get a 100ah or 200ah lithium battery to fully charge and to charge as quickly as lithium batteries can? Do I need a shunt or would getting a battery with Bluetooth be sufficient?

For your needs it’s going to be about decent battery capacity. I would wire in a Bestgo or SOK 200AH lithium under the dinette bench and go from there. Or take the plunge on a 400AH for not that much more. Great that you already have the DC-DC charger and a lithium capable WFCO charger. The charging might not be “ideal” from the WFCO but should be ok. Just for some perspective we have a 400AH Bestgo battery and on the last 3 week trip only needed to charge the battery twice from generator. That was lights, water pump, phone charging, significant furnace use and minor inverter use (microwave). No solar charging.

Lithium batteries can take a lot of current if you want to push them hard. My Bestgo can take something like 200A. To charge the battery quicker I did install a Xantrex Freedom XC inverter/charger that is capable of up to 80A DC charging (set in 5A increments). Admittedly though I have it set to 50 or 55A to go a bit easier on the battery. You could always look at upgrading the charger down the road if the WFCO isn’t performing well enough for your needs or you need greater flexibility. There are quite a few options out there.

We have the Victron BMV-712 to monitor battery SOC but the Bestgo has a built-in meter that seems to track with the Victron quite nicely. The built-in meter might meet your needs. I haven’t messed with Bluetooth although I’m sure that could work too.

So in a nutshell I think you really can just wire in a decent capacity lithium battery and take it from there.

[hugh]

My DIY batteries have Bluetooth, but I still have a shunt. The main reason I went that route is that the shunt does a better job of monitoring the state of charge than the Bluetooth built into the batteries. Also, I have a Victron inverter and solar charger, so adding a Victron shunt allowed some nice full system monitoring capabilities that I wouldn't have otherwise.


That said, you could always start with whatever is built into the battery and add a shunt later if needed.


As far as charging goes, the WF-8955-AD-WAGO has a 50 amp output, which should be able to fully charge a 200ah lithium battery from empty in around 4 hours.


Another thing to consider is how to protect the batteries from being charged when they are cold (below freezing) as that will damage them. The simplest way is to just turn off the charger when it's cold, but that's a potentially expensive mistake if you forget to do so. The other option is to buy batteries with built in protection.

[BobG]

Originally Posted by GTR guy

After reading through the details of what many of you have done with your lithium set ups, I am more confused than when my journey started. I would appreciate some advice that I can't seem to locate here or in other online forums but imagine someone here can cover this off the top of their head.

It appears that folks go one of two routes with their upgrades, get enough capacity to run the trailer almost as though it were on shore power or just put in a lithium battery in place of a lead acid and live with the fact that they are not fully utilizing the benefits of a lithium battery. I am aiming to be between these two camps but not sure what I need to do to get there. All I want to do with lithium is run a couple of lights, the Maxair fan, another 12V fan somewhere in the trailer, the water pump when necessary and sometimes the blower in the furnace (although not often) and a 500 amp inverter so my wife can recharge her phone and computer. That said, I want to go days to a week without plugging in.

I just came home with my 21NE that has the lithium ready package which consists of Victron Orion-Tr-Smart 12/12 volt 18 amp isolated DC-DC charger and a WFCO Power Converter (model WF-8955-AD-WAGO) with an output of 13.6V DC and 55A. The lead acid battery is currently in the storage on the tongue but I intend to put a lithium battery under the dinette. No solar at the moment as my goal is to charge the battery at home before heading out and not needing to charge until I hit a site with electricity or I come home.

What do I need to add/upgrade to get a 100ah or 200ah lithium battery to fully charge and to charge as quickly as lithium batteries can? Do I need a shunt or would getting a battery with Bluetooth be sufficient?

Your charging is limited to the WFCO output. In the future, you can add a separate 12 volt charger with more output or you can add solar, depending on what you decide.

My thought for battery is that you add a 200Ah lithium battery and try to leave space in the dinette bench to add an identical parallel battery in the future. SOK has nice batteries.

For monitoring the battery I would add a Victron SmartShunt. You can go a couple ways with this:

BMV-712 Smart that includes shunt and dedicated readout. You can also use the VictronConnect app on your phone or tablet to monitor the battery.

Another choice it the SmartShunt 500A and then use a tablet or your phone to monitor the battery via the VictronConnect app or you can add a GX device and Touch50 screen but that is not necessary.

https://www.victronenergy.com/battery-monitors

Have fun making the transition and make sure to use good quality cables, connectors, fuses, and crimps of the correct size to limit voltage drop.

BlueSea has good quality stuff including fuses. They have a wire size calculator on their website and Circuit Wizard app for your phone. They do about the same thing. These can be used to size wire for amp capacity or for voltage drop. Remember that length of conductor is the total of the positive and negative (round trip).

[John in Santa Cruz]

my PD4655L outputs a steady 50 amps when charging, this takes my 5200 watt hour Lithium (2 x 12V 206AH) battery from nearly flat to full in about 7 hours. I wouldn't want to charge any faster.

[GTR guy]

Thank you for your help!

[alanerickson]

Originally Posted by GTR guy

After reading through the details ......

The big user in some of these is the compressor fridge, so if you want the least amount of battery worry get a propane (absorption) fridge. Con: Some people have problems cooling when it's hot, others have no problem. Please don't start the debate.
If you are on battery with the items you mentioned, you're probably looking at around 10-15ah/day. So I'd say 200ah of capacity would get you a good two weeks.

[splitting_lanes]

Originally Posted by GTR guy

…
It appears that folks go one of two routes with their upgrades, get enough capacity to run the trailer almost as though it were on shore power or just put in a lithium battery in place of a lead acid and live with the fact that they are not fully utilizing the benefits of a lithium battery. I am aiming to be between these two camps but not sure what I need to do to get there. All I want to do with lithium is run a couple of lights, the Maxair fan, another 12V fan somewhere in the trailer, the water pump when necessary and sometimes the blower in the furnace (although not often) and a 500 amp inverter so my wife can recharge her phone and computer. That said, I want to go days to a week without plugging in.

I just came home with my 21NE that has the lithium ready package which consists of Victron Orion-Tr-Smart 12/12 volt 18 amp isolated DC-DC charger and a WFCO Power Converter (model WF-8955-AD-WAGO) with an output of 13.6V DC and 55A. The lead acid battery is currently in the storage on the tongue but I intend to put a lithium battery under the dinette. No solar at the moment as my goal is to charge the battery at home before heading out and not needing to charge until I hit a site with electricity or I come home.

What do I need to add/upgrade to get a 100ah or 200ah lithium battery to fully charge and to charge as quickly as lithium batteries can? Do I need a shunt or would getting a battery with Bluetooth be sufficient?

We have the lithium ready package and I’ve already added a lithium battery under our dinette. I added a shunt as it’s a super handy gauge for determining battery status. I think a setup like this would work for you.

https://www.escapeforum.org/forums/f...ion-23464.html

[GTR guy]

Originally Posted by splitting_lanes

We have the lithium ready package and I’ve already added a lithium battery under our dinette. I added a shunt as it’s a super handy gauge for determining battery status. I think a setup like this would work for you.

https://www.escapeforum.org/forums/f...ion-23464.html

Thank you for sending the link. With my 21NE, the battery is currently in the tongue storage box. Has anyone had experience moving battery inside as part of the a lithium upgrade? It appears that the + wire is run under the trailer and up into the front of the dinette but the - wire simply leaves the tongue storage to the frame.

Can I simply remove the current + connection to the bus under the dinette, leave the old battery cables where they are to keep the holes filled, add a ground bus for a new - wire and add a new + wire to the bus where the current + wire is attached? Do I need to upgrade the wires from the battery?

[splitting_lanes]

Originally Posted by GTR guy

Thank you for sending the link. With my 21NE, the battery is currently in the tongue storage box. Has anyone had experience moving battery inside as part of the a lithium upgrade? It appears that the + wire is run under the trailer and up into the front of the dinette but the - wire simply leaves the tongue storage to the frame.

Can I simply remove the current + connection to the bus under the dinette, leave the old battery cables where they are to keep the holes filled, add a ground bus for a new - wire and add a new + wire to the bus where the current + wire is attached? Do I need to upgrade the wires from the battery?

If you’re going to shorten the wires between the wfco and battery, and shorten the wires between the battery and inverter, you can probably re-use them. I repurposed wire that I removed - the inverter wire was 2 gauge and there’s very little voltage drop over 1.5 feet of it at 140 amps. I probably should have upgraded the wfco to battery wire to 6 gauge from 8 gauge, I see about .25 volts drop over 5 feet of 8 awg when it’s charging at 57 amps. I thought it’d be limited by the 8 awg ground, but I don’t think it is ( there’s 2 grounds ). The voltage drop calculators on the internet do a good job of estimating voltage loss over a given wire size/distance/current. Make sure you verify hot and ground distance and combine them for determining loss. If the loss is too much, the WFCO won’t go into lithium bulk mode charging…. So the charging rate will be much lower, slower…