Lithium battery upgrade

[Kthompson]

I know this horse has been beat to death many times, but after hours of searching, I never found my answer. I’ve been a lead acid guy for ever. Now that it’s time for new batteries, I want to get rid of my 4 - 6 volt 225 ah flood acid batteries. After all of my research, I found the Vatrer 12 volt 460 ah lithium battery with self heating and its own 250 amp BMS. After getting different answers, I am somewhat sure that the 460 ah lithium battery has more usable power than the 4 225 ah lead acid batteries. Instead of doing a dc to dc charger, and an alternator protecting battery isolator, I’m wanting to do it cheaper and easier. Since I have a 3000 watt inverter that feeds certain 110 volt plugs in my coach, why can’t I just plug in a lithium battery charger to that? I figure that I might need to disconnect the house batteries from the chassis battery/house battery isolator, so the alternator will only be feeding the chassis battery. Does anyone see any problem(s) in doing this?

 

[RollingManCave]

I bought one of these but have not played with it yet.

Amazon.com

I still have the LA house battery that will be changed out for lithium and I think I can use this to control time being charged by the alternator . My other battery bank is lithium and the solar charges that most of the time.

 

[Richpatty]

What are you using to charge your existing LA batteries? Could that be adjusted for Lithium?

Most inverters are also chargers.

 

[Kthompson]

I have a Xantrex 3012 inverter that has a charger built into it. It says it will either invert or charge, but won’t do both at the same time.

 

[Richpatty]

Generally you would not need to use the inverter and charger at the same time…as inverting generally happens when away from shore power….and so there would be no power to charge anyway.

 

[Swipular]

Since I have a 3000 watt inverter that feeds certain 110 volt plugs in my coach, why can’t I just plug in a lithium battery charger to that?

So you want to charge your batteries with your battery inverted power? This woun't work. You could plug a charger into a non-inverted outlet and charge them when you are on shore power. If your inverter / charger does not have a lithium profile it will probably be worth upgrading it in the long run.

As for the alternator, if you install lithium batteries you will want to disconnect the house batteries from the BIM so that the alternator does not try and charge them. The better solution is to replace you current BIM with one of these Lithium Battery Isolation Manager. They are fairly inexpensive and will allow your alternator to safely charge the lithium batteries.

Kenny

 

[Kthompson]

After extensive research, I’ve decided to replace my 4-6volt deep cycle flood acid batteries with a Vatrer 12 volt 460 ah lithium battery with a 300 amp BMS and self heater. My Xantrex 3012 will charge at 14.5 volts, so that will give it a full charge. Though everyone says the 200 amp alternator will be fine, and won’t over heat, I’m going to swap out the stock battery isolator for a smart isolator that will safeguard the alternator.