Lithium Upgrade

[Submariner]

Cutwater28GG and Gswearin, and I, we recorded a fantastic discussion all about converting to lithium on a boat. In short, the house bank needs to be completely isolated from the thruster and engine batteries. It's also recommended that the engine and thruster banks remain FLA or AGM. Also, depending on your electrical needs on your boat, upgrading solar may actually be less expensive and provide a larger return on investment for you instead of going to lithium.

Tune in to our podcast where we discuss all of this and more.

This podcast was recorded specifically because of a Tugnuts thread talking all about Lithium as this topic comes up quite a bit. It was recorded specifically for this Tugnuts forum.

Lithium Install Tech Talk with Martin, Gavin and Gary from Tugnuts. Ranger Tug and Cutwater.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWcZtMbfetI

 

[briandunnington]

Thanks for recording this. My house batteries died and I have been considering whether to make the jump to lithium. Even though the lithium solution is appealing, I ultimately decided to stick with AGM batteries. I have an R23 and we are light electricity users - most nights we only use the fridge, a few lights, maybe the radio. For us, upgrading our solar has really been the key. We went from the stock 90w panel to 350w (2 x 175w) and they put out a lot of energy. So far at least, any amount of amp hours we use during the day, the solar panels entirely make up again the next day (in the PNW, but only been used in the sunny summer so far). At that rate, we can go pretty much indefinitely with this setup (2 100 amp hour batteries for 100ah usable).

I am happy to stick with this solution for the simplicity (didnt want to re-wire the whole boat), but mostly because it meets our needs.

One question I had was about minimum charge rate. I heard in the video that AGM batteries have a minimum charge rate and feeding them a low amount of watts is not good - how does that square with a solar panel that slowly ramps up in the morning - when the sun is just rising the panels are not putting out much energy - is that bad for my batteries? Or is the MPPT controller helping with that somehow?

 

[glider4]

Thanks guys! This is definitely a hot topic. Too many folks think it’s just a matter of buying and swapping out their AGMs for lithium batteries. After my research I decided it’s too big a project for me to ever tackle myself. And too expensive to ever hire out. Fortunately, our solar upgrade meets all our current ( pun intended) needs.

 

[Submariner]

One question I had was about minimum charge rate. I heard in the video that AGM batteries have a minimum charge rate and feeding them a low amount of watts is not good - how does that square with a solar panel that slowly ramps up in the morning - when the sun is just rising the panels are not putting out much energy - is that bad for my batteries? Or is the MPPT controller helping with that somehow?

AGM and FLA don't like being in a partial state of charge either. You do the best you can. Solar will help keep the batteries closer to fully charged than fully depleted. Batteries don't last forever. We just hope to get several season out of them.

 

[Submariner]

Personally, I wouldn't mind spending some time on a RT23, RT25, RT29 or RT31 (or RT43) specifically... I've got the electrical design that'll work in any Ranger Tug (or Cutwater for that matter). All that's left is the game of Tetris. I know all the components that need to be installed, I just don't know where they would physically fit on the boat.

On the RT27-OB, I know it's an expert level game of Tetris which is why I had to re-wire my entire cockpit electrical.

I don't know that this would be necessary for other models. There may be an easier way on the other model boats. I just would need a few hours to crawl around, photograph and draw out the physical implementation. The end result would let me know the level of simplicity or difficulty in converting to LFP.

I'd do this discovery/design work at no charge as I'd really like to know what it would take on other model boats.

 

[CruisingElvinRay]

Come to NC, Martin! You’ll see how I put it together in my R-23. There is room for 4x100Ah Dakota Lithium batteries without taking any space in the center cockpit locker.


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[Nwdiver]

You are welcome to crawl in my boat’s innards, if you have time at the rendezvous, go for it. Hope to see you next weekend

Ed
Old bold diver

 

[cruz-in]

Thanks guys! This is definitely a hot topic. Too many folks think it’s just a matter of buying and swapping out their AGMs for lithium batteries. After my research I decided it’s too big a project for me to ever tackle myself. And too expensive to ever hire out. Fortunately, our solar upgrade meets all our current ( pun intended) needs.

For many Trojan AES batteries are a great option. 1200 plus 100% DoD cycles.

 

[Submariner]

You are welcome to crawl in my boat’s innards, if you have time at the rendezvous, go for it. Hope to see you next weekend

Ed
Old bold diver

Cool. Looking forward to seeing your C288. 🙂


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