Happy 13th birthday to my LiFePo4 battery bank (5/10/2009)

[Maine Sail]

Happy 13th birthday to my LiFePo4 battery bank (5/10/2009)!
Back in 2007 the first lithium iron phosphate battery cells were just beginning to be manufactured and become commercially available. I dove in & began researching everything I could about lithium iron phosphate. Unfortunately back then there was scant white papers and scant research available. Anything that was available was behind a pay-wall at some university. I decided if I wanted to learn about lithium iron phosphate I needed to buy some cells & start experimenting. That was the only way I was going to learn. My first cells were small 100 Ah thundersky cells because they were relatively inexpensive and I didn't really care if I ruined them. being this early into a new technology I knew I was going to get some arrows in my back being a pioneer.This was all before cylindrical LiFepo4 cells even existed.it would've been much easier to destroy a few $10 wonderful cells than cells the cost me $200 apiece.

I wound up destroying those initial cells pretty quickly experimenting with charge voltages, how deeply you could cycle them & such. I quickly found out that they didn't really care how deeply you discharged them other than going below about 3.00 VPC. I quickly learned that the cells did not need to charge to anywhere near 3.65 V to attain 100% state of charge. I also learned that they did not like to be absorbed for longer than is absolutely necessary. On those early cells these batteries were quickly degraded if you left them on absorb for too long a duration. After all this testing and experimenting I finally decided to order a set of 400 amp hour Winston cells for my own vessel. It may sound hard to believe, that back in 2009 we had a lot more availability in battery management systems. Genasun was actually building a BMS Clean Power Auto had one and there are a number of others mostly designed for EV use but that can be modified for marine use . Other than Genasun the only BMS that was specifically designed for marine application was made by a company called Clean Power Auto. Demetri the owner of that company is now is the engineer at Lithionics.for perhaps 2000 cycles I use this clean power auto BMS. At that point I switched to a REC BMS.

For my own banks charging I decided on 13.8V @ roughly a .4C charge rate with a 30 minute absorption and no float. The primary charge source for this bank has been the alternator and a Balmar MC 614 regulator. While we had plenty of solar solar it remained off most of the time. We used this bank with just 30 minutes of engine runtime a day. This is pretty easy in Maine with the light winds we have in the summer. Doing all the charging from the alternator worked out perfectly. If we needed to stay at anchor for more than three days I would simply flip on the solar array just to slow the discharge. The original charge regime I set up for this bank back in 2009 has worked amazingly well. Today the battery has over 2300 cycles on it with almost every cycle going to at least 80% depth of discharge purposely. As of the last discharge capacity test the bank could still deliver the full 400 amp hours of capacity (Technically a little bit over). So, for those who say LiFePo4 hasn't been around long enough to see how long it actually lasts, I'd say 13 years & 2300+ cycles is pretty good data so I am personally sold.

[Stekir]

That's more than impressive. Especially as real abuse will damage all batteries, and my understanding is that much has been learnt in those 13 years about what is good and bad for LiFePO4. Interesting charging set up too, which has clearly worked very well.

You must have paid a hefty sum, but it has paid off - perhaps benefiting from a period when sub standard but lower cost batteries became so ubiquitous?

[belizesailor]

Congrats!

🍻

[Tayana42]

Great to see you back Maine Sail!

[JPA Cate]

Indeed, welcome back, so glad you feel up to it, and congratulations on a super article about your batteries!

Ann

[RGN]

Ah yes Main Sail! Welcome back indeed. Hope you and those batteries live long and prosper.

[GILow]

Timely update, thank you, as I am currently teetering on the fence of going lithium or staying FLA Trojan for the new boat.

I greatly respect your work and this may well be the definitive push that gets me off the fence. (Leaving a big set of imprints in my posterior from sitting there for so long.)

Small point of order, are you sure that’s 10th of May, 2009? Or is it 9th of May, 2010? [emoji6]

[Maine Sail]

Originally Posted by GILow

Small point of order, are you sure that’s 10th of May, 2009? Or is it 9th of May, 2010? [emoji6]

Definitely sure it is May 10 2009.

[Lake-Effect]

Hey MS, great to see that you're posting again.

If you were to specify a similar upgrade to a user in 2022, what batteries, chargers and/or BMS would you specify?

One of my pet rants re marine DC systems is that no supplier seems to have an engineered one-stop solution for the above components, that just work. Other than experts like yourself. Maybe a new service you could offer.

[hzcruiser]

Congrats, MS!

Do you happen to know or did you log how many cycles the bank has had (roughly) ?

[Simi 60]

Originally Posted by hzcruiser

Congrats, MS!

Do you happen to know or did you log how many cycles the bank has had (roughly) ?

Last line...

So, for those who say LiFePo4 hasn't been around long enough to see how long it actually lasts, I'd say 13 years & 2300+ cycles is pretty good data so I am personally sold.

[hzcruiser]

Originally Posted by Simi 60

Last line...

oh yes, missed that, 2300, that's a lot!

[hzcruiser]

Having said that, it's 180 times per year on average.

[CharlieJ]

RC
Welcome back! You were missed.

[sailorboy1]

Originally Posted by GILow

Timely update, thank you, as I am currently teetering on the fence of going lithium or staying FLA Trojan for the new boat.
[emoji6]

Keep in mind that in 12 years you may use 3 sets of FLA golf cart batteries and it still will be less than LFP. Be sure you determine your "need" for more fancy batteries.