R 23 Lithium Battery Installation

Hi Fellow Tugnutter's,
I was wondering if anyone has installed a lithium house battery bank. I'm researching my options on new batteries for our 2019 R23 and like the idea of less weight, better DOD and also an increase of the overall total amp hrs. Right now we have 180 amp hrs lead acid batteries with the 20 amp charger. The firefly replacement would be my choice but the weight of each battery is what I'm trying to avoid. I would relocate the battery bank to the starboard rear hatch to offset the boats list from the 9.9 kicker on the port. Any suggestions are welcome on the equipment upgrades required, updated wiring diagrams and opinions to see if it's worth these additional costs for this weekend cruiser and eventually 4 days on the hook.

Thanks
Bruce

You would at least double your usable capacity by simply replacing your pair of 90Ah batteries with a pair of Firefly G31's. Especially since you could technically run the Firefly's all the way down to 0% DOD. Weight wise, they'd be similar to the lead-acid batteries you already have. But you did say you're trying to avoid Firefly's as you want weight reduction.

Have you looked into upgrading your solar panel? We swapped out the factory 160 watt solar panel for a pair of 200 watt panels (400 watts total). We go marina to marina and don't usually need shorepower hookup's. Boating season is usually great weather with more than enough sunshine to replenish our batteries. A 160 watt panel will put in about 50amps a day, our 400 watts puts in over 125amps a day. You may be able to easily achieve 4 days on the hook with your existing battery bank by upgrading your solar instead of your batteries.

Love the video's btw, I've just ordered 3, 110 watt SunPower semi flexible panels and I'm waiting on delivery (2 to 3 week wait). Installed the Victron 100/30 Smart Solar controller last weekend with the 90 watt factory panel. Found it's only putting out 25 watts with good sun. My plan is to replace the solar panel and see if the new panels will replenish the existing batteries at least for the rest of the season and think about the batteries replacement possible in the winter. If I replace with the 2 fireflies this willl give me 232ah. Shore charger would increase to 40 amps or possibly 60 amps if I add a 3rd battery. My understanding is that I would need to replace the engine and thruster batteries to AGM as the charging profile are the same with the firefly. Any thoughts?

How do you plan on installing the semi-flexible panels? I've not seen that type of panel installed on an R-23 yet.

The first step I did with our solar was to upgrade the solar controller to the Victron MPPT 100/30 with the factory 160watt solar panel. I did that in December. During the winter months (Dec/Jan/Feb), at high noon with clear blue skies we would see 40 watts out of our 160 watt panel. The sun is simply too low on the horizon during the winter months. Once spring arrived that all changed and we would see 80-140watts on average and I could see real gains from solar. This is what led to our upgrade to 400 watts of solar. On boating season days we generally see anywhere from 1.5kw to 2.7kw. It's not uncommon for us to see our batteries hit 100% fully charged by mid afternoon and the solar controller shut off (go into the float stage). Especially if we are traveling at all using the engine. 'I've seen over 50 amps going towards the house bank between engine and solar while cruising. We go marina to marina and rarely need shore power. Our 348Ah battery bank is usually around 70-85% SOC by morning (about -100ah consumed). Then then the sun comes up. 🙂

For your battery bank
180ah of Flooded Lead-Acid for 63ah usable @50% DOD.
232ah of Firefly Oasis AGM for 151ah usable @80% DOD.

With solar, it's unlikely you'd even fall close to 80% DOD on a pair of Firefly's. To get that kind of runtime, you'd need to keep the total amp draw at 11amps or less, which is typical loads. Nothing excessive. Refrigerators, lights, radio, Garmin, all normal will usually fall under 11 amps. To keep the weight low, you might try a pair of firefly's first before looking at 3 of them. I have 348ah, the lowest I've had our house bank down to was 40% SOC. You would want at least a minimum charge rate of 20% with Firefly's. With your solar upgrade to 330 watts, you may not even need to upgrade your battery bank.

The battery charger that came with my boat is an Abso 20amp charger. It has three outputs.
Output 1 - To the house bank can be configured for AGM, Gel, Flooded-Lead Acid or Lithium.
Output 2 and 3 - to the Engine and Thruster can be configured for AGM, Gel or Flooded Lead-Acid only.

It supports 2 charge profiles. However, the ACR's that automatically close when they sense a charge voltage will put all three battery banks in parallel. Because of this, it would be best that all batteries are of the same type (AGM, for example).

Thanks for watching our video's! I'm glad you've found them useful. We are working on an upcoming mini series "Down at the Dock, Mod Edition". I plan to go over each mod I've done and discuss why we upgraded, what we upgraded, why we chose that product, where we purchased it from, what we spent, the work involved (level of difficulty), and most importantly, what are the results we have experienced since the upgrade. Real world data that I've seen on our boat.

I have 2 options on the installation of the panels. Either on the Sunbrella or on the roof rails. I'm leaning to the roof rails with the Gemini 1" split jaw clips and marine board. Both are valuable real estate we don't want to give up as we sometimes remove the Sunbrella to get more sun on the back deck or mount the kayak and paddle boards to the roof rails. Want to add 2 more rails higher than the existing ones and make them removable if they shade the panels.

Going to see the results once the new panels are installed with the existing batteries. With them being flooded lead acid, the right thing to do would be to swap them out eventually to AGM's. I'll just have to sacrifice the weight of the Firefly's, relocate them to the starboard side hatch (hopefully they'll fit and I don't have to sacrifice the center hatch real estate), add the Victron smart battery temp sensor and run a new 1/0 cable to my power busbar, upgrade the existing battery charger and wire (thinking Promariner 1250 with #8 awg). My understanding of the the lithium bank would be more complicated and the added components costs would be expensive and not worth the hassle.

Thanks for the advice Submariner. Let me know if i'm missing anything or any other suggestions. Look forward to the new UTube series.

Thanks

Hey Bruce,

Does your outboard have the aux charging cable installed? That alone simplifies any house bank install upgrade. You can keep the main engine lead to the start battery and connect the aux to the thruster. Those two batteries can be agm’s or fla’s. No reason to change them. Then you can add a dc to dc charger off the thruster battery to charge the house bank. Most all dc to dc chargers can be set to any battery profile (agm, fla or lithium). Best part about this is you can remove the acr that is forcing you to similar battery chemistry across your systems.

I did replace my start and thruster batteries with lifeline cranking agm’s. The lifelines have always treated me well in those applications. My house is lithium, but only because I wanted to make it somewhat large and easily expandable. I have the 20amp shore charger feeding the starting and thruster batteries and I added a 60amp shore for just the lithium, going to 100amp charger would have maxed my 30amp shore power when the air con, water heater were on and we put something in the microwave. My tiny solar panel only feeds lithium. I have been following Submariners upgrade and after attempting to find a simple way to add more solar I think I will follow in his footsteps and have the 2x200 watt panels that are super high efficiency installed at the marina in the fall (if they can get the panels).

In my experience, increasing your shore power charger is nice if you’re stopping briefly to charge at a marina or while dining at restaurant or friends house, but if you are overnighting at a marina and stop for 16 hours, a 20 amp charger will give you 280+ah into an agm bank. A lithium bank would take close to all 320ah.

I had fireflys in my MasterCraft a few years ago. A pair of them powered the stereo. After a summer of music at the sandbar in 100° temps they decided they would not hold a charge the next year and I punted them and went back to fla’s. Your temps should be lower in Canada and as long as you don’t do what I did (drain them and then not ever really fully charge them) you shouldn’t have any problems.

Best of luck. This is my first cruiser style boat without a gen set and it’s been a challenge for sure. The wife doesn’t realize the breaker flipping and preplanning I have to do to keep us comfortable. But she picked out this boat so I can’t make a stink or she would feel bad about it.

Brian 27 OB":1hwzvek9 said:

Hey Bruce,

Does your outboard have the aux charging cable installed? That alone simplifies any house bank install upgrade. You can keep the main engine lead to the start battery and connect the aux to the thruster. Those two batteries can be agm’s or fla’s. No reason to change them. Then you can add a dc to dc charger off the thruster battery to charge the house bank. Most all dc to dc chargers can be set to any battery profile (agm, fla or lithium). Best part about this is you can remove the acr that is forcing you to similar battery chemistry across your systems.

I did replace my start and thruster batteries with lifeline cranking agm’s. The lifelines have always treated me well in those applications. My house is lithium, but only because I wanted to make it somewhat large and easily expandable. I have the 20amp shore charger feeding the starting and thruster batteries and I added a 60amp shore for just the lithium, going to 100amp charger would have maxed my 30amp shore power when the air con, water heater were on and we put something in the microwave. My tiny solar panel only feeds lithium. I have been following Submariners upgrade and after attempting to find a simple way to add more solar I think I will follow in his footsteps and have the 2x200 watt panels that are super high efficiency installed at the marina in the fall (if they can get the panels).

In my experience, increasing your shore power charger is nice if you’re stopping briefly to charge at a marina or while dining at restaurant or friends house, but if you are overnighting at a marina and stop for 16 hours, a 20 amp charger will give you 280+ah into an agm bank. A lithium bank would take close to all 320ah.

I had fireflys in my MasterCraft a few years ago. A pair of them powered the stereo. After a summer of music at the sandbar in 100° temps they decided they would not hold a charge the next year and I punted them and went back to fla’s. Your temps should be lower in Canada and as long as you don’t do what I did (drain them and then not ever really fully charge them) you shouldn’t have any problems.

Best of luck. This is my first cruiser style boat without a gen set and it’s been a challenge for sure. The wife doesn’t realize the breaker flipping and preplanning I have to do to keep us comfortable. But she picked out this boat so I can’t make a stink or she would feel bad about it.

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Hi Brian, I have the aux charging cable on my 2020 R23. I have only one ACR installed because of it. If I install a dc-dc charger off of the thruster battery, would I have to also install an upgraded battery charger on top of the abso? If I'm connected to shore power, will the dc-dc charger provide the extra charge required for the Firefly's? I would think so. Any thoughts would be appreciated.

-Craig

Hi,

We just replaced the two house lead acid batteries on our R23 with Lithium. We were down to barely being able to run the fridge overnight along with the anchor light. My wife pushed for the lithium option once I described how it would effectively double the capacity of our house bank. Her comment was that we would be nuts to cheap out on batteries when they would allow us to maximize the enjoyment from our fantastic boat.

We got the two new 100 Ah Battle Born batteries and installed them on July 27 - the day before we left on an 8 day trip to Desolation Sound. We ran the fridge at a setting between 4 and 5 the whole time and we had ice for drinks each night. We had only the 100 watt stock solar panel and three 45 minute trips relocating to different anchorages for charging events. On the morning of day 6 I had to run the portable generator to charge the house batteries. Take off the first travel day and we were on the hook basically for 5 days before I had to charge the house bank.

I chose Battle Born because of this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5E30u-66VI After going through this process, I am extremely impressed with the product and their customer service. I had done hours of research (I am no electrician) and from my very first email (which they responded to within hours) to my phone calls and delivery arrangements, they were excellent. They confirmed my choice of the Victron 12/12 V - 30A DC/DC Smart charger and recommended I use the default settings. They confirmed my conclusion that the engine to house ACR would need to be removed from the house charging circuit. In effect, the DC/DC charger takes the place of the ACR. They were were also familiar with and helped me configure the existing Abso 1220 charger to the correct Lithium settings for shore power charging.

The Victron Smart charger is kind of like a sophisticated ACR. It senses whether the engine is running and if it is, accepts current from the engine battery which it uses to charge the house bank. It only works while the engine is running. It has a blue tooth connection so I can confirm on my phone that it is charging the house bank when we are under weigh and it shows the charging voltage, etc.

The Abso charger works fine for charging from shore power but it must be connected to the house batteries on "bank 1" because that is the only charging circuit which has a lithium setting and I needed to go in and set up a disconnect current which was provided to me by Battle Born. I was pleased to see on my clamp meter that it delivers a full 20 amps to bank 1 which the lithium batteries comfortably draw. The downside of this was that the 20 amp circuit breaker trips after a few minutes at 20 amps so I had to upgrade that to a 25 amp circuit breaker (I just did that last night). These two batteries can take up to 50 amps each apparently (100 amps in parallel) which would fully charge them in two hours. The Abso will take 10 hours to charge them so I will probably upgrade the charger to 60 amps for the house batteries next year so I can get almost a full charge running the portable generator for about 3 hours if I need to instead of 10 hours.

My handy clamp meter shows that the Morningstar Duo on my boat is providing half of the solar charge to the house batteries and half to the starter battery. I read somewhere that it was supposed to be 90/10 but that is not the case in my installation. I called Battle Born to ask about this because it is important not to over-charge lithium batteries and they do not need or want a float or trickle charge. They said that these low currents with rest periods overnight would not harm the batteries. I will change this next year anyways.

I plan to add more solar next spring along with a Victron Smart MPPT solar controller. These controllers also connect by blue tooth and provide a ton of immediate information as well has historical info in the form of graphs, etc. I will probably leave the existing panel and controller in place to keep the starter and thruster batteries charged and use flexible panels mounted on the bimini to charge the house batteries as needed and store the panels in the cave when we are moving and they are not needed.

That's our lithium conversion story and probably too much detail but there you go. 🙂

I will save the hydraulic steering cable disaster story for another time :roll:

Good luck !!

Craigmconrad":s0cqtcpr said:

Hi Brian, I have the aux charging cable on my 2020 R23. I have only one ACR installed because of it. If I install a dc-dc charger off of the thruster battery, would I have to also install an upgraded battery charger on top of the abso? If I'm connected to shore power, will the dc-dc charger provide the extra charge required for the Firefly's? I would think so. Any thoughts would be appreciated.

-Craig

Click to expand...

Hey Craig. Meercatz sounds like he has the same boat and it all worked out for him. Single charger 3 banks, bank 1 house, bank 2 & 3 would be the thruster and start batteries which (on my boat anyway) are the same AGN cranking batteries. DC-DC Charger should not be working on shore power.

I am not 100% sure about the Victron, but my Kisae DC-DC charger will put a load on the battery for up to 3 minutes after the engine is running to figure out if it is still charging. My DC-DC charger pulls 50amps, if you add a second charger, make sure you wire it properly. If your 20 amp charger is charging your engine and thruster batteries and you add a second charger for your lithium, you will want to keep the 20 amp charger bank 1 connected to the lithium as well. The reason is a bit confusing, but if you are charging the battery attached to your DC-DC charger with less than 30amps, the charger could drain down that battery as you are only putting 20amps (or less) into it. I think the Victron is supposed to be smarter than the Kisae that I have but no one has confirmed that yet.

https://photos.app.goo.gl/au7QCLTx6s54q8MS7

Thanks all for the replies. Going to wait on the battery replacement for now. Want to clean up the existing wiring to make the battery replacement in the future easier. Just had to share these pictures of our solar upgrade that we completed over the weekend. Ended up with 2 @170w SunPower flexible panels and mounted them to Starboard via the roof rails. Will be adding new roof rails slightly higher and in a different location to carry the kayak and paddle boards. Looking forward to the summer months to see what the maximum solar output will be!

After many hours of debating and researching our battery bank upgrade, I've decided fall is a good time of year to start a project of this magnitude and see the benifits in spring and summer of 2022. We went with 2 heated Battleborn batteries @ 100 ah each and the Victron Smart 12/12 30 amp Isolated DC DC charger. Our Shore Charger upgrade will be the Promariner 60 amp Pro Nautic for the house bank only and keeping the existing 20amp Abso charger for the 2 FLA or even upgrading to 2 Optima Blue Top, dark gray, starting AGM. After several phone calls to Battleborn and 1 to Promariner, I modified the existing R-23 wiring diagram and I'm looking for some input or suggestion before starting this project. Just want to make sure I haven't left anything out.

Thanks
Bruce

https://photos.app.goo.gl/k3Jns9dbkZFGvubeA

Are you going to keep the 20 amp charger on the house bank, as well, for a total of 80 amps? You should be able to set it up with a lithium profile on bank 1 and the agm profile for 2/3.

Just a thought.


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Was not planning on using the 20 amp charger for the house bank, only for the starter and the thruster batteries. The 60 amp charger will charge the house bank in a few hours plus I can customize the charge voltages to the battery specs. The 20 amp Abso has a preset Lithium setting of a constant 13.9-14.4. Battleborn wants 14.2 -14.6 (recommended 14.4) for bulk/absorb and a float of 13.6 or lower.
Today, I spent several hours at different marine hardware stores shopping for wire, lugs, screws, marine board, fuses, fuse blocks and a busbar. It's weird to see how supplies are running low and having to go to several stores or even ordering some supplies from Amazon so you have everything you'll need to start the project.Tommorow is layout day. I need to cut and install the marine board to mount the battery trays (which arrive Monday) so i can place and secure the batteries that arrived last week. Also planning on mounting the DC DC Charger, another negative busbar, MRBF fuse block and fInalizing the location of the 60 amp battery charger which arrives Wednesday. Can only work outdoors on sunny days (not a covered slip) which takes time away from boating and fishing in the nicer weather here in the PNW.

My first question would be; do you need the extra capacity? Granted the weight reduction on one side is nice, but you can always move the batteries to balance that out.

As the Mai Thai's lithium project comes to an end, I'm very pleased with the end results. I found this one, very labor intensive and was able to clean up some of the wiring from the factory/dealer and also utilizing split loom to protect most of the wires in the cockpit area. For me, it took alot of research from this forum, emails back and forth to Battleborn, Promariner, Victron dealer, and Kisae. Another thing to consider is the time it takes to order electrical supplies needed to complete this project and making sure you have everything plus more so that you are not making multiple trips to the marine store or waiting on that delivery from Amazon. I'm looking forward for those warm sunny days to put the batterries/solar array to the test and seeing the benefits on the water this spring.

Thanks for everyone's help,
Bruce

https://photos.app.goo.gl/BAR5KaUzZmx6DVVE7

Thanks Rooster5440 for sharing this installation set of photos.

My only concern with the installation is that there are hoses that carry water that lie above the electrics, and if they get pin holes or break in some manner to allow water to drip or flow out it could be disaster for the electrics. Have you given any thought about how to protect the electrics from the Murphy's law happening ?

Do both chargers run through the shore power connection? I swapped the ABSO 60A in place of the ABSO 20A, now debating about finding a place for the 20A.


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The water hoses for the scuppers and deck washdown are located by the factory away from the electronics. I'm not concerned about water leaking on them at all.
Yes, both chargers are hooked up to shore power with seperate 15 amp breakers for each. Right now the 60a charger is only charging the house bank and the 20a charger is powering the starter and thruster. I can add the 20a charger to assist with the 60a but like the fact that the chargers are isolated to charge the different chemestries. The battleborns can handle 50a of charge per 100ah battery.