Will my converter work with lithium batteries?

[boywonder]

Originally Posted by bkalanj

How do you know how much battery is drawn? Right now the indicator on the wall shows about 12.5 V, unplugged and with no power used. Then when the fridge works for 3-4 hours on batteries alone, the voltage drops down to 12.3 and closer to 12.2 when fridge compressor is turned on.

Also, would it hurt anything to leave it plugged into shorepower for longer than 24 hours? Could it just stay plugged in all the time while sitting at the house?

A battery monitor will tell you loads more than estimating state of charge by using voltage. BTW, around 12.2V with flooded or AGM batteries is about 50% state of charge so stay above that if you are using voltage as an estimator.

Battery monitors will count coulombs in and out of the battery giving you a fairly exact state of charge in %. They also show you how many amps are going in or out of the battery at any given moment, as well as total AH used, battery voltage and a few other things. Victron and Xantrex both make popular monitors that work well.

If you don't have the charge wizard for the intellepower, then it's just a fixed voltage (dumb) power supply that outputs a fixed 13.6V...and that won't fully charge your house batteries. Adding the charge wizard will make it a multi-stage "smart" charger, but (at least on the lead-acid wizard) it will also equalize the battery every every 21 hours...and that is very bad for AGMs (and Lithiums!)

So needless to say it annoys me to no end that Intellepower doesn't build the wizard functionality into the unit but they have the unmitigated audacity to charge extra for something that kinda works…..ok …rant over.

FWIW I just upgraded to a Lithium house battery and I happen to have an Intellepower 9160 with a charge wizard in the old setep. I installed a Victron Orion DC-DC converter between the starting and house batteries and then connected the Intellepower 9160 to the starting battery. This does two things; it powers up the Victron which is a smart charger for the Lithium battery and it also charges the starter battery when plugged in. I’m no longer using the charge wizard since I’m not sure that I need it.

[bisonthecruiser]

Originally Posted by boywonder

A battery monitor will tell you loads more than estimating state of charge by using voltage. BTW, around 12.2V with flooded or AGM batteries is about 50% state of charge so stay above that if you are using voltage as an estimator.

Battery monitors will count coulombs in and out of the battery giving you a fairly exact state of charge in %. They also show you how many amps are going in or out of the battery at any given moment, as well as total AH used, battery voltage and a few other things. Victron and Xantrex both make popular monitors that work well.

If you don't have the charge wizard for the intellepower, then it's just a fixed voltage (dumb) power supply that outputs a fixed 13.6V...and that won't fully charge your house batteries. Adding the charge wizard will make it a multi-stage "smart" charger, but (at least on the lead-acid wizard) it will also equalize the battery every every 21 hours...and that is very bad for AGMs (and Lithiums!)

So needless to say it annoys me to no end that Intellepower doesn't build the wizard functionality into the unit but they have the unmitigated audacity to charge extra for something that kinda works…..ok …rant over.

FWIW I just upgraded to a Lithium house battery and I happen to have an Intellepower 9160 with a charge wizard in the old setep. I installed a Victron Orion DC-DC converter between the starting and house batteries and then connected the Intellepower 9160 to the starting battery. This does two things; it powers up the Victron which is a smart charger for the Lithium battery and it also charges the starter battery when plugged in. I’m no longer using the charge wizard since I’m not sure that I need it.

Which Victron Orion are you running and do you like it?

[boywonder]

Originally Posted by bisonthecruiser

Which Victron Orion are you running and do you like it?

Well....it's been installed for a whole week so far.....in the driveway.

I've got the 30A Orion.....they run really hot. It's mounted to an 1/8" aluminum plate that's holding a fuse block and I have a squirrel cage blower under the Orion that comes on when the van is running.

It's outputting about 25-27A when the battery is charging and the app works great.

Here is a video on mounting blowers to combat the heat:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xvXkdgln1NA

Hopefully this won't derail this thread...I can start another thread on converting from AGMs to LiFePo4 batteries.

[Scalf77]

To the OP, if you don't have a charge wizard you should get one. Or better yet move to a real three stage charger. The charge output of 13.6 is never really completely charging the battery, the charge wizard will be better.

I normally recommend plugging in if you have a temperature compensated charger, that has a float voltage that matches your (AGM). If you have the charge wizard the storage voltage would be a good match for the Lifeline AGM. It does do it's little conditioning voltage cycle after so many hours, my general perception is that the voltage really isn't high enough to be a real conditioning voltage, so while I am not a fan of it, I am not sure it it would be considered damaging and it still lacks temperature compensation.

Measuring SOC with just voltage can be fraught with issues. First is that most of those charts are based off of the resting voltage of a battery. A battery in the system is generally not resting, so those levels are not accurate. Also under load those values change ( and it actually depends on the load (current)). The other problem is with what and where are you taking those measurement's, again those charts based off of measurements taken directly at the battery. A good battery monitor is worth it.

Solar is both great and bad when managing the health of a battery. Usually with minimal loads, if fully charged the night before, it doesn't take much to get the battery back to the float stage. The problem comes with bigger loads or/and bad solar days. If you had a couple of bad solar days, it could be that your system will not be able to fully charge the battery. By the time it get's to absorption you could be loosing your available sun. Once you get behind the curve, it will usually take plugging in to catch back up.

Victron is notorious for their thermal compensated spec sheets. I would consider it a good thing because many of the other units don't give you that data. I really don't know why they don't have a active cooling solution. The video was generally pretty good, although it generally did not prove his real world increase of 25% more power. What he really needed to control was the ambient air temp of environment the units were in. When comparing the one with fan and one without fan, we still had the fan installed but not on. This would have most likely has a negative effect on that unit, probably not much but there.

Thermal camera data is cool, but just some well placed thermocouple would provide better data. Anyway it was still a good watch, I expect the 25% comes more from keeping it from derating versus getting the additional power out with cooling.


-greg

[boywonder]

Originally Posted by Scalf77

It does do it's little conditioning voltage cycle after so many hours, my general perception is that the voltage really isn't high enough to be a real conditioning voltage, so while I am not a fan of it, I am not sure it it would be considered damaging and it still lacks temperature compensation.

-greg

Yup! I can confirm that my AGMs survived a few unintended "conditioning" cycles......While I was away for a few months the charger was plugged in for days at a time. I got my Intellepower 9160 for free when we installed an inverter/charger in the neighbors RV......and my inverter is just an inverter. I wouldn't spend my hard-earned cash on one though, I'm sure there are much better choices.

[moorefc]

Originally Posted by boywonder

Well....it's been installed for a whole week so far.....in the driveway.

I've got the 30A Orion.....they run really hot.

Just for clarification did you use the Orion-Tr Smart or the non Smart DC-DC?

Thx

[boywonder]

Originally Posted by moorefc

Just for clarification did you use the Orion-Tr Smart or the non Smart DC-DC?

Smart. The app is basic but works fine... you can adjust the absorb and float voltages and maybe a few other things, and see current. I have a battery monitor so looking at current is easy.

Apparently the early S/N's run hot..and they changed a few things, but the current production also run hot.