Hello! Converting my 50' sailboat to LiFePo4.

[ohthetrees]

Hello everyone! I'm a full-time cruiser with my family of 4 on our Hanse 505 sailboat. Our boat is currently in dry dock in Puerto Penasco, Mexico for hurricane season while we visit friends and relatives for a couple of months. Our boat has a tired 12v 640ah AGM battery bank and 750w of solar. Time for a battery upgrade!

I've ordered 16X EVE 280ah cells from Amy for a total 13.4kWh battery bank. While I'm waiting for those cells to arrive from China, I'm designing the upgrade. I'm trying to keep as much of my current setup intact as possible, but still have a safe and well engineered system.

I'm leaning toward a 4P4S system, with the REC Active BMS, a Norkyn alternator regulator, and some Victron stuff (inverter upgrade, MPPT solar controllers, a Cerbo GX). I'll post in much more detail in other subforums to solicit feedback about the details of my plan.

Thanks for a great community, I've learned a ton on these forums already!

 

[svetz]

Welcome to the forums!

 

[ohthetrees]

Thanks!

 

[DreaminFred]

Progress on your install? Why so much battery storage?

 

[newbostonconst]

Jealous....we got all our ASA's this last summer and would love to do a conversion....

 

[Philtao]

If you have not yet purchased your BMS, you can check the comparison chart I prepared trying to be objective based on information each vendor provide. Of course it all depends on the functionality you are looking for.
If you want a worry free BMS that can manage the whole installation (including CerboGX, remote controls of many inverters / chargers, pre-charge, backup battery, charge cycle....) and gives you web access to your live measures, measures history and events log... look at the TAO BMS

 

[ohthetrees]

Progress on your install? Why so much battery storage?

Currently driving to Mexico (where the boat is) with a suv packed with stuff for this conversion! I tried to anticipate everything I’d need, wires, lugs, tools, heat shrink, devices, etc, because getting things in Mexico is much more difficult.

Why so big? Well, we cruise full time, and want a much bigger energy “bank account”. That way when we have a week of great sun, or motor a lot (alternator), we can put that in the bank for cloudy or high demand weeks. We also want to do more electric cooking, and if we are somewhere we have lots of solar, we can save up to run our water maker or laundry machine without having to use the generator.

Also, the incremental cost of more cells is relatively small compared to the overall system cost, so why not? Adding an extra 3.4kw to the build only cost $500 more.

 

[ohthetrees]

If you have not yet purchased your BMS, you can check the comparison chart I prepared trying to be objective based on information each vendor provide. Of course it all depends on the functionality you are looking for.
If you want a worry free BMS that can manage the whole installation (including CerboGX, remote controls of many inverters / chargers, pre-charge, backup battery, charge cycle....) and gives you web access to your live measures, measures history and events log... look at the TAO BMS

I did a fair amount of BMS research and ended up with an REC active BMS. But I did not run across your BMS, and had never heard of it. It looks quite interesting.

 

[Simi 60]

Welcome and good luck with the build

Why so much battery storage?

It's not that much
We are doing similat but with 840ah @24v in 8s3p config.
Doing it for the same reasons given above, storage is cheap.

Even though we motor a lot we are not bothering with the added expense of alternator charge, don't even have one on the motor at present, but we do have 2.5kw of solar

Cells should be here in Oz in a few weeks, ship is going through Cebu Straights now.