LiFePo4 battery users

[tx2sturgis]

'You' meaning my friend who missed the point that off-grid power, and storage for that power, ain't cheap.

[tx2sturgis]

I received the Bioenno 10 amp charger and plugged it into the wall and the battery.

Since the BattleBorn battery was recently topped-up using solar, the wall-powered charger only operated for about 10 minutes, raising the voltage to about 14.5 and then it shut off.

Brief test, but so far, so good.

[justjim]

Being able to see the blue tooth on the LifeBlue batteries has been interesting. It is said that lithium can take all that you can throw at it until 100% but that is not true with these. I am topping them off for installing and the blue tooth shows how many amps are being accepted and according to the tech it was important to charge until the acceptance was 0, not just until the meter said 100%. These batteries will say 100% at 13.6/7 volts and then taper the charge rate until reaching into the 14's. The last one was down to 3.5 amps at 14.1v when I had to shut down for the night. The final top off of all three batteries before combining will be done with the system being installed, a 160 watt portable and my Meanwell power supply.

So interestingly enough my Lifelines can take 5 time the charge rate of the LifeBlue. 500 amps per 100 Ah of battery vs 100 amps per 100 Ah of Lithium. Both batteries have a extended time of tapering in the end phase of charging. In theory I could charge the LifeLines in the bulk and most of the absorption stages much faster than the Lithium's could make it to their taper down stage. I say "in theory" because it is not practical to hit peak charge rates off grid or even on grid without special equipment be it the 300 amps the LifeBlue will take or the 3000 amps the LifeLine"s will

[sternwake]

While lifeline does claim they can handle a 5c rate, if one applies 500 amps to a 90% depleted 105 AH  lifeline, it would rise to 14.4v nearly instantly and amps would taper quickly down into the sub 100 amp range likely within 30 seconds.


Lifeline says no more than 14.3 +/- 0.2 so the 5c charge rate is a bit of marketing designed to impress as the voltage should not be allowed to exceed 14.xx volts, and huge amperages will get even a healthy well depleted lifeline there very quickly at which point amps taper quickly too.


How many amps it take to reach instant absorption voltage on lead acid battery will vary greatly among lead acid batteries, and change as the battery ages.
Lifeline Odyssey and Northstar are the only lead acid batteries which say there is basically no amperage limit on charging, just limit voltage to 14.x.

When newer my Northstar-27 would take 65 amps for 26 minutes from under 50% charged before voltage rose to 14.7v.  Now many hundreds of deep cycles later that is about 18 minutes from ~30% SOC.

I think this ties into the Lifepo4 discussion, as we do not have much data as to how much, for how long they can actually accept, and how that number changes as they age, nor do we know if this is stressful on the battery or not.

The high amp recharge from a well depleted state until full, is like some magical performance restorative on my Northstar AGM, yet I would not do it every time, nor would I regularly do this  to other le$$er AGMS which say no more than 33% charge rate, and the floodeds, well they might gurgle up a cloud of hydrogen and sulfuric acid mist.

The Lifeblue batteries seem to be deliberately tapering charge current when approaching full.

I know my Phone does the same thing, although they say lithium basically can accept high currents until the Knee.  My phone starts tapering the charge right around 75%, according to its % screen, which I do not really believe either.

While the phone should be able to measure current into and out of the battery easily enough, I believe, at least on my S4 mini, that the % is entirely voltage based.  There are times when it drains the battery hard and heavy for no reason i can determine.  When this occurs, and I put the phone into Airplane mode, which turns off the radios, the battery %  will actually climb a few numbers right after doing so.
With little to no Peukert involved with lithium, if the phone were counting Mah in and out, then the battery % would not rise once the major loads are removed, but since it jumps from 33% to 39% just in airplane mode with no charging source applied, It seems pretty evident the phone battery % is based solely on the battery voltage.


I'm leaning towards perhaps making a prisimatic portable 60AH I can just hook inline with my LEad acid system as I want to gain experience and data with Lifepo4.
One issue is my existing charging sources, all which I can control voltage manually, I can lower float to whatever number stops charging, but will lithium still accept amperage if float is set so low as to be essentially off?

[RoamingKat]

No need to set different values for each with LiFePo4... just set the bulk, absorb and float to the same voltage. It isn’t a case of the batteries not accepting more amps...it is more the case that the charge controller not delivering more when the voltage on float is less than the SOC.

I have a morning star and a victron. I really came to hate the Morningstar because it would show me that it was pushing 14.0 volts, yet battery was SOC at 13.4. So, Morningstar seemed to think the SOC was 14.0 and would shut down prematurely. After discussions with Morningstar....all value were custom configured to 13.8.

Victron does LiFePo4 with a “native” setting. Morningstar openly admits they do not “support” LiFePo4, but has a webpage that sort of talks about it.

Next chance I get I will replace it with a victron.

I think the batteries in cell phones are not LiFePo4...cobalt?

[tx2sturgis]

No need to set different values for each with LiFePo4... just set the bulk, absorb and float to the same voltage.   

I don't think that's quite right.

With a lead acid charger programmed manually for lithium, you would set bulk and absorb to the same voltage, say, 14.4, then you want the float voltage to be nothing, if possible, or set around 13.2 to 13.6, essentially cutting off float current. 

At least that is what BattleBorn recommends. Other brands might have other set points.

[justjim]

LifeBlue is 14.6v absorption, 13.8 float

[tx2sturgis]

We sure need to get Sternwake in there poking around at LFP batteries....

Or maybe not?

[Roadtripp]

Sorry to butt into the thread but I was wondering if this thread should be moved? I don’t know the rules for “sticky” threads. Or exactly what a sticky is supposed to be. I just interpreted it as a important reference thread??  But maybe this whole thread could be moved to the sticky section as I don’t see much there for Lithium batteries?? Who’s department is thread allocation. Is that the moderator or administrator or? 
 Thanks for all the input on the moving target of batteries.

[Blacktank]

Sorry to butt into the thread but I was wondering if this thread should be moved? I don’t know the rules for “sticky” threads. Or exactly what a sticky is supposed to be. I just interpreted it as a important reference thread??  But maybe this whole thread could be moved to the sticky section as I don’t see much there for Lithium batteries?? Who’s department is thread allocation. Is that the moderator or administrator or? 
 Thanks for all the input on the moving target of batteries.

all the mods can sticky,it's the first threads you see at top