Question regarding solar and lithium batteries.

[JColeman]

I have the charge controller on the left and it does indeed support Lithium batteries. I made sure of that in case I want to switch from my 225 ah lead/acid to lithium. A single 100 ah Battle Born would triple our usable battery capacity. But currently it seems the solar can provide more power than we can use on a sunny day.

We also find that our usage during the day is easily maintained and we get some recharge from our single 160W panel. We run the generator for breakfast and some TV in the evening and go to bed with "almost" full batteries and enough to run our furnace on a cold night. I can easily maintain this for our typical 3-6 night boondocking trips by running the gen an hour or so more or less a day. Suits our needs. If we were full time or boondocked for a month at a time I would look at it differently.

[jbarnes4868]

Thank you guys for your input. My Renogy controller is 5 years old so it doesn’t have a lithium setting. I don’t need a inverter for my needs but I’d like to charge as quickly as possible when running my generator. Thus the reason to change out the converter.

[DaveMatthewsBand]

Thank you guys for your input. My Renogy controller is 5 years old so it doesn’t have a lithium setting.
I don’t need a inverter for my needs but I’d like to charge as quickly as possible when running my generator. Thus the reason to change out the converter.

I've heard good things about these converters. Some of our members here use them.

Here's a link to their website

[gbkims]

I put in 2 battle born 100Ah batteries.
The Progressive Dynamics PD9170AL 70 Amp, 12 volt, Lithium Converter charges them at 60A.

[cgjog182]

We do a lot of dry camping up in B.C. The idea that the existing lead/acid battery(ies) crap out when they get to half-charge drove me to lithium. We have a Honda generator but running it twice a day is inconvenient, loud and smelly. Solar is the way to go IMO so we have a Zamp portable setup coming. All these things are expensive but either I go first class...or my kids will.

[JColeman]

I put in 2 battle born 100Ah batteries.
The Progressive Dynamics PD9170AL 70 Amp, 12 volt, Lithium Converter charges them at 60A.

I am thinking of doing the same thing. Was that a plug and play swap or more like plug and pray?

[jbarnes4868]

We do a lot of dry camping up in B.C. The idea that the existing lead/acid battery(ies) crap out when they get to half-charge drove me to lithium. We have a Honda generator but running it twice a day is inconvenient, loud and smelly. Solar is the way to go IMO so we have a Zamp portable setup coming. All these things are expensive but either I go first class...or my kids will.

One thing to keep in mind. Most of the portable units only have 200 watts of power. On my Renogy setup (two 100 amp panels) I get about 15 amps of charge during the 4 hours of high sun. Not really enough to charge the batteries with any significant power. With the new 70amp controller/charger a couple of hours of generator will charge up a couple of lithium batteries.

[gbkims]

I am thinking of doing the same thing. Was that a plug and play swap or more like plug and pray?

A bit of both.
The Progressive PD9170L was a drop in for my lead acid Progressive PD9270V converter.
I moved batteries and equipment from the front to the passthru, so I could have made a mistake in rewiring was possible.
The Progressive Dynamics converters are close in size the the WFCO, just a bit more square shaped.
To not be confused by the Black being +12V on the converter I added some red heat shrink on it at the converter.

Initial charge of the 2 battle born:


A bit later:

[srobins]

A bit of both.
The Progressive PD9170L was a drop in for my lead acid Progressive PD9270V converter.
I moved batteries and equipment from the front to the passthru, so I could have made a mistake in rewiring was possible.
The Progressive Dynamics converters are close in size the the WFCO, just a bit more square shaped.
To not be confused by the Black being +12V on the converter I added some red heat shrink on it at the converter.

Initial charge of the 2 battle born:


A bit later:

Gene

I have a question for you concerning the readings I am seeing as far as voltage and current from the PD9170AL and pictures you posted. I have two of the Battleborn lithium batteries and replaced the stock WFCO charger with a PD9160AL. Even with the new converter, I am concerned with the amount of time it takes to charge the batteries.

We were recently at a campground without hookups that restricted general usage to just 2-hours in the morning and 2-hours in the evening. According to my BMV-712 by batteries were at 56 percent charge when I started the generator for the 2-hours of available time in the evening. I was not able to bring the batteries to a full charge during that 2-hour window. The best I did was ~94 percent charged. I was never able to get anywhere near the 60 amps out of the PD9160AL, and I believe this resulted in the extended charge time. The best I could do according to the BMV-712 was ~35 amps.

After returning from the trip, I ran some additional tests with the trailer plugged into shore power. When the batteries were at 92 percent charge, my voltage reported by the BMV-712 was 13.52 volts and the current was 34.9 amps. I understand that they will be a small voltage drop in the wires from the converter to the batteries, and this appears to be your situation also. However, you are still indicating 61 amps at 13.77 volts. I can't get anywhere near that amount of charge current.

I contacted Battleborn and forwarded screen shots of the BMV-712 at different state of charge for the batteries. They looked at my setting and said everything looked good. They suggested that I contact Progressive Dynamics and run it by them. They are asking about the voltage output at the converter. I measured 14.61 volts at no-load and 14.3 volts under load. As expected there is some voltage drop through the wiring, but that does not explain how you are achieving the higher current through the batteries compared to what I am seeing.

Do you have any suggestions on what I might check next?

Thanks
Steve

[gbkims]

Steve

I'm not sure what the difference could be.
I did shorten my wire runs from the converter and batteries by putting them in the passthru.
I have about 6' Red & Black 4 Awg from the converter to the DC Bus and about 2' of 2/0 Red & Black each from the batteries(including the parallel jumpers) to the DC Bus.
My BMV-712 still has to be installed, so no info on that.
Also I haven't run the batteries down much as of yet.