Quote:
Originally Posted by SloPoke
In our Seneca, We have two charging sources that provide for charging the Chassis and House Batteries. Both of these have charge regulation set for Flooded Lead-Acid batteries with three stage battery maintenance/storage feature and a Battery Isolation Manager connected between the two battery arrays to charge each other.
Knowing that LiFePo batteries have much different charging requirements than Lead-Acid batteries - and LiFePo batteries require charging equipment specific to that type of battery, because of the known variations in voltage between them and Lead-Acid.
That said, Adding Solar with a charge controller for LiFePo covers these batteries in the house, but will overcharge the chassis batteries. Then, what about when the vehicle is on the road and running the charging circuit from the chassis Charging system designed for Lead-Acid is charging the LiFePo batteries. - It appears that these do not work well when connected by the Battery Isolation Manager (BIM) when it us monitoring charge state by voltage and connecting each type of battery for charging by One of the two sources.
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From studying the a few different solar charge controller set-up manuals, I've come to the conclusion that although each different battery type has different charge parameters, the differences are not all that large and mainly represent differences in OPTIMAL charge parameters. In the chart in the pic (this one is from Renogy but others are very similar) you can see that the max charging voltage, boost voltage, and float voltage do not vary a huge amount from battery type to battery type. The biggest difference is in equalization charge voltage, and this is critical because applying the normally much higher equalization voltage to a Li-ion battery is really bad for it and causes battery damage. Nobody wants to do that to $1,000/battery batteries, so Equalization charging Li-ion is not allowed (but if your charge controller has to have an Equalization setting selected for Li-ion you must not select anything higher than 13.6 volts. So if your converter is not Li-ion capable specifically, it will still charge your Li-ion drop-in batteries (like BattleBorn), just not optimally. And, it will not harm your Li-ion batteries as long as you do not enable an equalization mode at any voltage above 13.6.
Regarding the BIRD or BIM, this area is a little less clear to me. I think I understand now that if the BIRD or BIM changeover threshold voltage is too low, your house battery bank charging sources will not adequately charge your chassis battery. That's why there are now replacement BIM's that are Li-ion compatible specific. I had to install one in my last install a few weeks ago. It solved the problem and still provides all of the stock BIRD or BIM features. I don't believe the alternator charging the house batteries rolling down the road is a problem. Alternators typically output less than 14 volts and the LI-ion's like BattleBorns like to be charged at 14.4 volts optimally.
If I have any of wrong, I look forward to being corrected. Again, I'm trying to learn as much as possible about this topic as possible, as my next house battery change I will likely go Li-ion. My change is not gong to be soon though, the neighbor I did the solar and Battleborn install for gave me his 4 nearly new good quality 6 volt golf cart battery "take-offs", so I am set for awhile, especially since i also have solar.
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