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Topic: 600 AH Lithium Battery Installation (Read 5986 times) previous topic - next topic

Re: 600 AH Lithium Battery Installation

Reply #50 –
Rodney, You do not want the alternator to be recharging your LiFePO4 batteries directly. Use a smart multi stage Battery to Battery charger from Sterling or Victron between the alternator/start battery and the Battle Born batteries.

We really like the performance of ours. Solar alone keeps our batteries charged back to 100% almost every day.
Roger Engdahl and Susan Green
2001 U320 3610 #5879 (Home2) - 2014 Jeep Cherokee or 2018 F150
Hastings, MN

Re: 600 AH Lithium Battery Installation

Reply #51 –
Roger, Rodney has an IH45 with a 320 Amp alternator.  Would that make a difference?
2014 ih45  (4th Foretravel owned)
 1997 36' U295 Sold in 2020, owned for 19 years
  U240 36' Sold to insurance company after melting in garage fire
    33' Foretravel on Dodge Chassis  Sold very long time ago

Re: 600 AH Lithium Battery Installation

Reply #52 –
The size of the alternator doesn't matter much.  You get the maximum life (cycle count) out of Battle Borns if you charge them at no more than 20% of capacity so for 500 AH you want to keep the charge at or below 100 amps.  A Battery to Battery charger takes what ever the alternator puts out and uses what it wants to charge the house batteries in a multi step charge profile at whatever the max charge rate of the device is.  Victron makes a nice 30 amp B2B, Sterling makes a 60 amp B2B charger.  When the ignition is off (or engine is not running) they also act as an isolator so no other isolator is needed.  And as I understand it you can put these (of the same type and size) in parallel to get 60 amps from the Victrons for example. 

I have a 60 amp Sterling, it works well. Now that the Victrons are available I like the way they get setup and work and might have used those but more $ to get to 60 amps.

All of these can be set to any battery type so they are nice to all kinds of batteries.
Roger Engdahl and Susan Green
2001 U320 3610 #5879 (Home2) - 2014 Jeep Cherokee or 2018 F150
Hastings, MN

Re: 600 AH Lithium Battery Installation

Reply #53 –
Another question for Roger.
The IH45 will run the second AC  (Kitchen area) off the inverter.  I only do this when going down the road and it is not too hot where I need to run more then 1 roof and dash AC's  Running numbers it looks like that roof AC is using around  111 amps from the alternator.  Is there a way this could be done without reducing the life of the batteries?
2014 ih45  (4th Foretravel owned)
 1997 36' U295 Sold in 2020, owned for 19 years
  U240 36' Sold to insurance company after melting in garage fire
    33' Foretravel on Dodge Chassis  Sold very long time ago

Re: 600 AH Lithium Battery Installation

Reply #54 –
I have to think on this a bit. Normally, the alternator, the house batteries and the inverter have a common connection point.  With a B2B charger putting in say 120 amps into the batteries and the inverters pulling 110 there isn't much net amps left going into the batteries.  Now if you add in solar there might be enough.

This might be a good question for Oscar (valento on the Forum) he has lots of Lithium capacity, inverters, solar, charging schemes and more from AM Solar to get an idea how they did it for him.

Roger Engdahl and Susan Green
2001 U320 3610 #5879 (Home2) - 2014 Jeep Cherokee or 2018 F150
Hastings, MN

Re: 600 AH Lithium Battery Installation

Reply #55 –
Quote from: Roger & Susan in Home2 –
as I understand it you can put these (of the same type and size) in parallel to get 60 amps from the Victrons for example. 
Correct. This is what I'm doing next Sunday
1987 Grand Villa ORED
2001 U320 4010

Not all that wander are lost... but I often am.