Lithium Battery

[Lazyboy]

What would happen if I just fitted a lithium leisure battery (thinking 230/300Ah) and changed my solar regulator setting to lithium and left my mains charger on gel (no lithium setting)?
I am saying just remove existing batteries and replace with the lithium and no other components.
The vehicle has a 25amp factory fitted b2b.
Would it work?
Would there be any big disadvantages?
I am guessing that the number of cycles would be reduced but anything else.

 

[AdrianChen]

The B2B maybe a Schaudt unit, and have a lithium setting, and you've said the solar already has so that leaves just the EHU charger....

If the original Carthago fitted CBE 5XX then I think you would be fine, perhaps even more so on the LA setting since gel has a longer absorption phase (8 hours iirc) Doing this may not get the battery 100% fully charged, but will be very close (mine show 99.X% SOC at 13.6v - then it jumps realy quickly to 14.2v and 100%). Solar and B2B will top it up and allow cell balancing, so I doubt you would see any difference to the number of cycles the battery achieved.

If the original Carthago fitted CBE is a 5XX-3 model it may have a de-sulphation phase that is automatic, and I don't know how that is triggered (Possibly battery resistance?), so wouldn't be inclined to use one since if triggered it will raise the voltage higher than is good for the lithium battery's cells (15.2v iirc). Several folk have reported that they have this charger and it hasn't been a problem for their lithium's, I chickened out and changed the charger.

Since a compatible Victron charger of similar power output is around £120 I would fit one at the same time as the battery. Not a big job since the connections are the same and cable capacity should be fine.

The only thing the CBE box does that the Victron wont do is pass a signal to the main panel to show that EHU is connected. It can be done, but I didn't bother.

I believe most folk have found they can fit the new charger in the same space as the CBE.

 

[GMak57]

Funnily enough I just spoke to Fogstar yesterday on this very subject as I’m looking at doing the very same until I get the Victron inverter/charger fitted. Changed the CBE solar controller to a Victron controller with lithium setting as I already had that (the CBE one also had a lithium setting bit preferred the Victron) and the schaudt to lithium setting, and after speaking to Fogstar about my CBE 516-3 they said to set it to setting “2” which is 14.4 and 13.8 charging profiles and the desulphication kicks in when the charger detects the battery is less than 2 amps, so their recommendation is that if you flatten the lithium battery switch off the charger and charge it with a standalone lithium charger for a while to get it above 2amps then revert back to the CBE charger. I know this isn’t the perfect set up but it works for now until I get around upgrading the rest of the system. Ours is a 300ah Fogstar.

 

[cyberyacht]

I ran my lithiums without any other upgrades for a while. The only thing you probably need to check is the voltage that your B2B will push into them but unlikely to be an issue, I would have thought.

 

[AdrianChen]

Funnily enough I just spoke to Fogstar yesterday on this very subject as I’m looking at doing the very same until I get the Victron inverter/charger fitted. Changed the CBE solar controller to a Victron controller with lithium setting as I already had that (the CBE one also had a lithium setting bit preferred the Victron) and the schaudt to lithium setting, and after speaking to Fogstar about my CBE 516-3 they said to set it to setting “2” which is 14.4 and 13.8 charging profiles and the desulphication kicks in when the charger detects the battery is less than 2 amps, so their recommendation is that if you flatten the lithium battery switch off the charger and charge it with a standalone lithium charger for a while to get it above 2amps then revert back to the CBE charger. I know this isn’t the perfect set up but it works for now until I get around upgrading the rest of the system. Ours is a 300ah Fogstar.

Interesting to know that's how the de-sulphation thing works.

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