Switching to Lithium, which brand ?

[Soppy]

I picked up a Power Queen 12v 100ah battery for around $500 CDN on Amazon. It was not much more than a AGM from a local supplier.

[steved28]

Originally Posted by Persistent

I do not intend to bad mouth anyone. However, I am often irritating because I have difficulty keeping quiet.

Renogy's decision was probably correct. The batteries were most likely damaged by storing at less than full charge for too long. That is how most lead acid batteries fail in less than 5 years.

Manufacturing defects in lead acid batteries are rare. They may fail by loss of connections between plates or cells. Overheating of terminals due to poor connections and other things like that. It is unlikely the multiple batteries in a bank will all fail the same way at the same time due to manufacturing defects.

Always store lead acid batteries fully charged. Fully charged means 14 to 18 hours on a high quality RV charger. Fully recharge 14 hours before battery terminal voltage drops below 12.4 volts.

It is possible to overcharge AGM batteries. Most modern RV chargers will not do that. Older chargers have been known to destroy even flooded cell batteries while storing connected. As far as I know, Victron battery chargers that are properly set up will not overcharge AGM batteries.

All true, but in this case the batteries all test well, via multiple testing devices. They start out as normal, then suddenly drop in voltage prematurely. I performed a test for my friend, we charged the bank full, tested each battery individually, everything looked fine. I told him he most likely did not have a battery issue. But as a test we disconnected all loads, and introduced a small 6 amp resistive load. He has a good BMS system which showed about 60 hours of run time with this load. After running about 10 hours, the bank went dead, voltage dropped below 11V.
When my friend started investigating these batteries, he found many customers with this same strange issue. They are 100Ah batteries that act like 10Ah batteries. I can attest they have been well taken care of. We were unable to find the issue was with a single battery in the bank. I understand your skepticism, I have never seen anything like it either. He has since converted to LifePO4 and the system works great.

[Persistent]

we disconnected all loads, and introduced a small 6 amp resistive load. He has a good BMS system which showed about 60 hours of run time with this load. After running about 10 hours, the bank went dead, voltage dropped below 11V.
When my friend started investigating these batteries, he found many customers with this same strange issue. They are 100Ah batteries that act like 10Ah batteries.

The symptoms you describe are what one would expect from excessive venting or sulfation.

10 hours at 6 amps is 60 amp hours. The test is very close to the standard deep draw capacity test. Approximately 40% of the 100 amp hour storage capacity has been lost.

On the other hand, I am sure the new LiPO4 batteries with a good built in controller will work much better and last many years.

[Lunarcom]

Ended up going with a canbat 100 with the heater option. I like the Bluetooth system as well. Thanks for people’s input.

Originally Posted by Bertha Mae

Hi there,
Do your research. That’s number one thing to do to answer your question in regards to what battery and system will take care of your needs.
We are in Ontario and researched quite a bit before we finally settled on Canbat batteries out of British Columbia. They are not the least expensive, but they have great customer back up service Throughout the whole process of purchase and installation, they were easy to contact and able to answer a lot of our questions. When you call them, you will likely speak with Moe, who is their tech guy.
Check out their website. It actually has pricing on all of the different products that they sell.
They usually sell Victron controllers along with their batteries, and again, are able to help you choose what you might require for your application.
In regards to Renogy we researched and found that their customer service was severely lacking and after having bought a solar charging system through them, we are discovering that that is true to some degree.
We installed two, 150 amp our Canbat lithium, iron phosphate, batteries, as well as a Victron DC to DC charger and combined it with our 400 W Renogy solar charging system.
We installed all of this onto our 40 foot mountain air diesel pusher, and it works very fine in terms of allowing us to boondock.
If you want to call me, simply send me a private message and we can talk. Much simpler than this texting.