Lithium fears

[stranded]

If you are going to invest in Lithium in a big way, dispensing with gas, there are other costs - simply because of the opportunities that Lithium offers.

The inverter to start with, then the induction stove (that never crossed your mind when you had Lead) and maybe new saucepans. If you did not have an inverter already - you will now need 240v ac circuits and sockets (or you will not, conveniently, be able to use the power, almost, at your finger tips. Maybe, like us, you had an instant gas hot water system - that now needs replaced with a calorifier and an immersion heater (instant electric hot water heaters seem to need too much power). The B2B charger, though I note some don't use them. Solar might be cheap - but you need a decent display - or you cannot dispense with gas. One comment made - if you are being serious then you should consider 24v, rather than 12v. Suddenly all your 12v appliances are incompatible

We already carried an electric kettle, toaster and bread maker, for use in a marina when on shore power.

Some costs may be considered 'unfair', not considering 'like with like' but they are often costs you would be less likely to incur with Lead.

Jonathan

And I note now, our posts crossed, Trident is considering a full sized domestic oven!

That’s at the extreme though isn’t it.

When I was researching my LifePo install it was because my AGMs were dying. I was not looking to dramatically change how we do things, just to have a bit more usable and more easily replenished capacity so we could last longer off grid, and hopefully do away with our hated generator as a bonus. We were lucky that our existing charging infrastructure, inverter, wiring etc. were all fine, so the additional cost was modest in the scheme of things and the benefits for us will be substantial.

To get hung up on the idea that LifePo only really makes sense in the context of a totally self-sufficient floating power station is to ignore the I would imagine many more users for whom swapping to LifePo might make sense without dramatically altering their whole onboard lifestyle. Not all, but some.

 

[geem]

Those figures are a little distorted though. You would not continually cycle Lithium from 100% to 0%. In reality it would be more like 60%-70% at the most (regularly).

There is no doubt that for some people Lithium is the best solution, especially for those living off grid, but LA works perfectly fine for millions of others.

Suggestions on here (by others) that LA only last for a very short time are nonsense. Looked after properly they last for several years.

With this forum being UK centric, you comments are very true, but add in the heat of the Caribbean, and lead batteries really don't last long at all, regardless of how you look after them. Amongst the cruisers we meet here, we rarely find anybody using lead and nobody plans to fit lead next time. There is a mass migration to lithium.

 

[Sea Change]

I was replying to a claim about it being cheaper to go lithium than to replace a single 110Ah battery.

No you weren't, nobody made that claim. You seem to have misread my post.
Someone claimed that lithium *batteries* were more expensive than lead acid ones, not including the associated costs of fuses, cables etc.
This just isn't true, once you factor in that lithium has about double the useable capacity. Prices are pretty much the same now for both technologies.

The extra costs of upgrading the system, especially alternator protection and charging, remains a factor and this is the main reason why lithium isn't always the right answer for everybody.

 

[geem]

No you weren't, nobody made that claim. You seem to have misread my post.
Someone claimed that lithium *batteries* were more expensive than lead acid ones, not including the associated costs of fuses, cables etc.
This just isn't true, once you factor in that lithium has about double the useable capacity. Prices are pretty much the same now for both technologies.

The extra costs of upgrading the system, especially alternator protection and charging, remains a factor and this is the main reason why lithium isn't always the right answer for everybody.

A friend here built 3x280Ah 12v lithium batteries under my supervision. The cells were $105 each. He purchased three JK bms at a cost of $130 a piece. He has way too much battery capacity for his needs compared to his 500w of solar. He said 3 fitted in nicely to the space previously occupied by his lead batteries.
Since his Jeanneau 45 DS has the bow thruster and windlass running from the engine batteries as standard from the factory, he has done nothing other than install the batteries and adjust his existing MPPTs to suit lithium. He did disconnect the VSR. He currently runs off solar with no additional load since he fitted lithium.
Another mutual friend with a Beneteau 45 has had his domestic lead bank fail so we removed one of the lithium batteries from the Jeanneau and have temporarily installed it in the Beneteau. So now the Beneteau is running on a single 280Ah battery with no mods other than disconnecting the VSR and running off 1000w of solar. The long term solution for both boats is to fit the new Victron 50A DC/DC but as of yet, neither boats are Inclined to do that.
It doesn't have to be an expensive upgrade to go to lithium. It entirely depends on the existing systems onboard the boat and whether or not the owner intends to change his habits living aboard. You could go all electric cooking, add a big inverter, etc but thst doesn't need to be part of the cost comparison

 

[Sea Change]

A friend here built 3x280Ah 12v lithium batteries under my supervision. The cells were $105 each. He purchased three JK bms at a cost of $130 a piece.

That's exactly the same as I paid for my second battery which was delivered to Grenada. The shipping etc was fairly hefty. I have an inferior JBD BMS.

 

[geem]

That's exactly the same as I paid for my second battery which was delivered to Grenada. The shipping etc was fairly hefty. I have an inferior JBD BMS.

These cells were grade .a from a USA dealer, the 18650 Battery Store. Shipping for 12 cells was $70US to Antigua

 

[stranded]

That's exactly the same as I paid for my second battery which was delivered to Grenada. The shipping etc was fairly hefty. I have an inferior JBD BMS.

In what way(s) are JBD bms inferior? Not questioning that they are, just interested to understand how, and perhaps if it is major, whether it would be possible to diy upgrade in a drop in (Fogstar Drift) battery. I am not aiming for perfection, and I’m not really interested in max cycles, but I do want it to be good enough.

 

[geem]

In what way(s) are JBD bms inferior? Not questioning that they are, just interested to understand how, and perhaps if it is major, whether it would be possible to diy upgrade in a drop in (Fogstar Drift) battery. I am not aiming for perfection, and I’m not really interested in max cycles, but I do want it to be good enough.

If the cells are grade A cells, you may find that with low load use (not running a 3kw inverter for example) thst the benifit of an active balancer like those fitted to a JK BMS is less of an issue.
If you were building your own batteries, the JK BMS makes a lot of sense. The three 12v lithium batteries we recently built needed no top balancing. We must connected them up to the JK and it sorted the balance out in about 3 cycles.

 

[Sea Change]

In what way(s) are JBD bms inferior? Not questioning that they are, just interested to understand how, and perhaps if it is major, whether it would be possible to diy upgrade in a drop in (Fogstar Drift) battery. I am not aiming for perfection, and I’m not really interested in max cycles, but I do want it to be good enough.

My JBD BMS has a pretty small balance current, measured in milliamps. The JK does a whole 2A.
Having said that, I've only needed to manually rebalance one of my batteries once, and that was more than two years ago. It's likely that I didn't do a good enough job first time round, or possibly wasn't careful enough when assembling it.

 

[stranded]

My JBD BMS has a pretty small balance current, measured in milliamps. The JK does a whole 2A.
Having said that, I've only needed to manually rebalance one of my batteries once, and that was more than two years ago. It's likely that I didn't do a good enough job first time round, or possibly wasn't careful enough when assembling it.

Ah, so it’s the active balancing. The Fogstar Drift Pro has a 2A active balancer which it talks about only plugging in when necessary - which suggests it is auxiliary to the everyday BMS, which in turn suggests to me it might be viable to add on to my common or garden drift. That does have grade A Eve cells, and so far they are staying within a thou or two of each other, but I have started really exploiting them yet, though I do have and have used a 3kw inverter for immersion heating etc. I’ll keep an eye on them when we move on board in June and get in touch with Fogstar if an insoluble difference starts to develop.

 

[geem]

Ah, so it’s the active balancing. The Fogstar Drift Pro has a 2A active balancer which it talks about only plugging in when necessary - which suggests it is auxiliary to the everyday BMS, which in turn suggests to me it might be viable to add on to my common or garden drift. That does have grade A Eve cells, and so far they are staying within a thou or two of each other, but I have started really exploiting them yet, though I do have and have used a 3kw inverter for immersion heating etc. I’ll keep an eye on them when we move on board in June and get in touch with Fogstar if an insoluble difference starts to develop.

With the Bluetooth app you can keep an eye on how they perform. If you see a balance problem that the bms can't deal with, you can also retrofit active balancing at that point. I think with grade A cells it is unlikely especially if you have a reasonable length of absorbtion time.

 

[stranded]

With the Bluetooth app you can keep an eye on how they perform. If you see a balance problem that the bms can't deal with, you can also retrofit active balancing at that point. I think with grade A cells it is unlikely especially if you have a reasonable length of absorbtion time.

When you say a reasonable length of absorption time….?

 

[geem]

When you say a reasonable length of absorption time….?

It may depend on how you use the battery. You can experiment with it. For us, we only do 15 mins since the active balancer in JK can do 2A. It will take more with a passive balancer if you are creating cell imbalance by virtue of how you use the battery. Simple 12v loads of lowish amps are unlikely to create much cell imbalance with grade A cells. We are running 2kw several times per day for cooking and running the 220v watermaker. Even with these loads our cell imbalance is minimal because the cells are good quality, grade A

 

[stranded]

It may depend on how you use the battery. You can experiment with it. For us, we only do 15 mins since the active balancer in JK can do 2A. It will take more with a passive balancer if you are creating cell imbalance by virtue of how you use the battery. Simple 12v loads of lowish amps are unlikely to create much cell imbalance with grade A cells. We are running 2kw several times per day for cooking and running the 220v watermaker. Even with these loads our cell imbalance is minimal because the cells are good quality, grade A

OK, cool, thanks Geem - I’ll see how things go.

 

[Neeves]

By the way we make bread in the air fryer or oven very successfully - not sure how power compares to a dedicated bread maker but can't be much different. And few people run a 240v boat with the associated losses on the inverter - we have a 110l 240v fridge, a 110l 240v freezer and our tv, internet, PCs etc all on 240v simply because the fridge and freezer together from a domestic supplier cost 1/3 of what a 12v 45l Dometic fridge would cost and are better made.

Despite the absence of sun and white clouds, but buckets of rain (more tomorrow) we took the time to bake you and your wife a loaf of bread using out bread maker, run from out Lithium battery (and the sun) and a 1,500 watt inverter (loss 0.5amp)

I confess I'm not into loaf specifications but we use 600gm of flour, plus water, yeast and (butter).

Most of the power usage is for actual baking and the main 'asset' of the device is that it does all the proving and kneading for you. It can also be pre-programmed so that the loaf is freshly baked for breakfast.

Power usage for a simple bread cycle, which takes a bit over 3 hours is 47 amps.

For those with low power resources we would set up the bread maker such that the bread baking segment of the cycle was planned for when we had the engines running - entering an anchorage. When we were in Tasmania in a 'fixed' anchorage we would commute to near our crayfish pot in Josepheline and then address the pot with a short run in the dinghy then moving back to the anchorage.


Your loaf is ready for collection, I'd say 'at your leisure' but bread needs to be eaten fresh - so if you cannot arrive in time, I accept it is at short notice - we'll bake you another one - just let us know.

We have found air fryers are a bit restrictive (and a, 'your', full sized domestic oven is a new 'must have'). We have 2 air fryers one at home and one that was on Josepheline - but neither was big enough to roast a duck (so we chopped the bird up to fit it in)

Jonathan