Licitti Heavy Duty AC Power Box

[tammons]

They really need to revise this design and bump the charging up to 20 amps 200 watts and add another 110v outlet.

 

[overl4nd]

All I've actually done so far is DC to DC charging, using this...

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B09TV5DP98/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

I prefer DC to DC where many others may not because I have a small 12-volt home solar plant. Since DC to DC charging is most efficient and solar power is free, this is what I invariably go with. Plus, I can also use the equipment in a vehicle. You would also need an adapter similar to this one. Or you could much more cheaply make your own.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08HR65DMD/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

If you can make your own Anderson connectors-- it's not hard-- I'd go with this for DC to DC charging instead of the charger above. It's cheaper and likely of higher quality.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07L6H8VKL/?coliid=I2N3BQT3MXAWCR&colid=16YEP39VJOBUP&psc=1&ref_=lv_ov_lig_dp_it

I've never wanted to use an AC adapter yet, but the item below is on order in case I want to use it while traveling. Since it's not in my hands yet, I have no idea how good it is. If I wanted to charge with AC immediately, I'd just add an Anderson adapter to one of several Victron chargers I already have lying around. I recommend anything made by Victron very highly, by the way.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0BCJ25SV9/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

All this charging gear does add considerably to the price. But in my case I already owned most of what I wanted anyway. Good luck, if you buy a Licitti!

I'll also add here that since writing the above posting I've seen a new review on You Tube that claims to have tested the inverter, and that it's definitely pure sine.

In a car/truck, does not make sense to have isolated chargers? Esp since both house and starter battery will ground to chasis. Might as well connect the two black (-) leads together

 

[Rabbit]

In a car/truck, does not make sense to have isolated chargers? Esp since both house and starter battery will ground to chasis. Might as well connect the two black (-) leads together

If I understand what you're saying correctly (and I may not), the problem is that if you connect the Licitti/Licittis (I now have two of them) to draw directly from the vehicle's alternator (unless the alternator is a special heavy-duty unit), it can overheat and destroy the alternator via too heavy a load for longer than the alternator is designed to sustain it. So, many of not most of us use a DC to DC charger in part to limit the draw to something the vehicle's hardware can long-term tolerate. I don't personally feel more comfortable adding more than about a 200 watt load to my not-heavy-duty alternator and I have to supply two 12-volt vehicle outlets out of this 200 watts. (One of the outlets supports other loads that have nothing to do with my Licittis.) So I use an 8 amp charger even though it's very slow. In my personal usage (but maybe not yours) so far that's plenty enough for me. I recently left home for two weeks with my two wired-together Licittis running a small 12-volt fridge 24/7, but (as an experiment) turned the charger down to 4 amps. After two weeks, including several days with very little driving, I arrived back home with about an 80% charge still in the batteries. I don't know how low they fell at the lowest point-- certainly a lot lower than 80%-- but the fridge never missed a beat. The ambient temperature varied wildly, which affects power consumption, and I don't know how to adjust for that. But for me the bottom line was that even at half my planned charge rate, for my personal usage, the setup worked and would've easily provided significant AC power as well had I desired it. My educated guess is that at eight amps of charge, a single Licitti would've sufficed. Your usage case can and almost certainly will vary.

 

[overl4nd]

If I understand what you're saying correctly (and I may not), the problem is that if you connect the Licitti/Licittis (I now have two of them) to draw directly from the vehicle's alternator (unless the alternator is a special heavy-duty unit), it can overheat and destroy the alternator via too heavy a load for longer than the alternator is designed to sustain it. So, many of not most of us use a DC to DC charger in part to limit the draw to something the vehicle's hardware can long-term tolerate. I don't personally feel more comfortable adding more than about a 200 watt load to my not-heavy-duty alternator and I have to supply two 12-volt vehicle outlets out of this 200 watts. (One of the outlets supports other loads that have nothing to do with my Licittis.) So I use an 8 amp charger even though it's very slow. In my personal usage (but maybe not yours) so far that's plenty enough for me. I recently left home for two weeks with my two wired-together Licittis running a small 12-volt fridge 24/7, but (as an experiment) turned the charger down to 4 amps. After two weeks, including several days with very little driving, I arrived back home with about an 80% charge still in the batteries. I don't know how low they fell at the lowest point-- certainly a lot lower than 80%-- but the fridge never missed a beat. The ambient temperature varied wildly, which affects power consumption, and I don't know how to adjust for that. But for me the bottom line was that even at half my planned charge rate, for my personal usage, the setup worked and would've easily provided significant AC power as well had I desired it. My educated guess is that at eight amps of charge, a single Licitti would've sufficed. Your usage case can and almost certainly will vary.

Oh, I do not doubt that you should never charge direct and use a DC-DC charger which limits the charging current to 20-40A depending upon you r alternator,.

I was referring to the fact that for car/truck, both the house battery and starter battery are connected to same ground. So when wiring up stuff, you can actually connect both the black (-v) terminals of input and output together.

 

[Rabbit]

Oh, I do not doubt that you should never charge direct and use a DC-DC charger which limits the charging current to 20-40A depending upon you r alternator,.

I was referring to the fact that for car/truck, both the house battery and starter battery are connected to same ground. So when wiring up stuff, you can actually connect both the black (-v) terminals of input and output together.

 

[Rabbit]

Ah! In my case the batteries aren't a permanent mount, so the grounds are not shared with the vehicle. The Licittis are set up in the bed of my pickup, and have to quickly and easily come out whenever the truck is used to move large items. I just unplug them from the 12-volt power outlet and then each other and I'm ready to go. When reconnecting, care must be taken to ensure that both batteries are at nearly the same state of charge.

 

[Ichthyo]

I leave my licitti 1000w inside the house because my 100ah battery doesn't have low temp protection. It is charged by a 110v wall charger with power from my off-grid solar panels. It runs the TV pretty much all the time and goes with us on camping trips.

 

[djlinux]

You probably can hook up both of these batteries together because both are basically lead-acid. (Mixing battery chemistries, like for example lead acid and Lithium Iron Phosphate, is however a Bad Idea.) But I wouldn't in this case, because there's more to it than just chemistry. Lead acid batteries are built differently inside when they're meant for different purposes. A car battery is meant to discharge "hard and fast", while a deep-cycle lead acid battery is meant to discharge "slow and deep". The differences inside that you can't see are both profound and important, and trying to use a car battery as a deep-cycle more than a time or two will damage it severely. Even just once or twice does a small amount of damage. You may also perhaps not know that discharging a lead-acid battery more than about halfway, whether it's deep-cycle or not, also damages it. Lead-acid batteries are in essence obsolete at this point, due to multiple inherent, inescapable disadvantages like this. The only purpose they still serve well is to crank engines, which for reasons it'd take me a long time to explain is a job that lithium still is unsuitable for. My advice is to just go ahead and bite the $350 or so bullet and buy a cheap 100 ah lithium iron phosphate battery from the list of those recommended on Will's website. You can discharge a lithium iron phosphate battery all the way without damaging it, it'll last through probably ten or more times as many discharge cycles, and probably will be good for ten or more years in real-world use. In other words, it'll probably outlive a lot of vehicles and power tools; this is a long-term purchase and should be viewed that way. To get the equivalent amount of power out of lead acid batteries (without damaging them) you have to buy _two_ 100 ah plus a set of pricey cables to connect them, and the last time I checked lead-acid batteries of that size ran about $100 apiece. So, it's really not as much more expensive as you might think to buy lithium iron phosphate. Besides, a lithium battery is roughly half-- sometimes less-- the weight. You're going to have this thing around for years, and will probably find a hundred uses for it (often it's easier to use a solar generator than run a long extension cord for a power tool, for example) besides hurricane prep. So... Again. I _definitely_ recommend lithium iron phosphate, also sometimes called LiFePO4 or LFP.

As for your solar panel... I have never actually used the solar function on my Licitti for reasons explained in the thread above-- I get my free solar input by other means. But... You can do a thing called "overpaneling" to a certain extent if you wish to. A solar controller can only accept so much input power, and that amount is listed in the device's specs. My guess is that if you stumbled across a 150 watt panel, you'd be okay with it-- the built-in controller would simply reject the extra input. But if you go too far in that direction eventually you can overheat and destroy even a top-brand, pricey solar controller. (Don't ask me how I know.) The big thing is that I'd look for a "12 volt" panel of 150 watts or under. "12 volt" here is a nominal term-- it doesn't actually produce 12 volts. Linked below is a moderately-respected name-brand example. Note that "hard" panels like this are much cheaper than the ones that fold up, and much more durable and longer-lasting as well as a general rule. There are cheaper brands of panels on Amazon that are probably just as good that I'd also personally buy without hesitation. But, this is a brand I know and trust. You'll probably want to purchase some suitable "extension wires" with the correct fitting as well, so that you can locate the Licitti in one place (perhaps even indoors) and the panel some feet away.

https://www.amazon.com/RICH-SOLAR-Monocrystalline-Efficiency-Module/dp/B08NDKHP9V/ref=sr_1_3?crid=MPNLQONJY6R0&keywords=150+watt+solar+panel&qid=1687041130&sprefix=150+watt+solar+panel+,aps,107&sr=8-3

One last thing... I have lived in Florida for a few years now, though I'm not a native, and am therefore no stranger to hurricanes. You will probably also want and need a wall-charger for your Licitti, in part because hurricanes block the sun and you'll need a 110-volt charger to recharge from your generator. While any 12-volt battery charger will work for a LiFePO4 battery so long as the battery doesn't go entirely dead, once that happens you'll either need a dedicated, "designed" LiFePO4 charger (I suggest one in the thread above) to restart it, or you can "jump" it from any 12-volt source just like a car. This is a good thing to know and understand going in. I've never had one go completely flat on me, and hear it's pretty uncommon. But it can and does happen. Also note that you may want to purchase an Anderson adapter of some kind for your charger-- again, see the thread above.

Also... I sense a need to keep to a budget here. If you want to go _super_ basic and don't mind connecting a few wires, learning a few relaitvely simple new tricks and maybe a little inelegantly-designed home-made-from-scrapwood ugliness you can save at least a small amount of money by making your own setup out of components. If you skip the solar-- doable, IMO, for emergency and around-the-house use since you have a generator-- you can cut costs. If it were me I'd start off by buying a LiFePO4 battery of whatever size I could afford. (Yes, even under severe budget pressure I'd not use lead acid. The advantages of LiFePO4-- and there are many more than I've listed here, like much-faster charging-- are simply too great to pass up, and lead-acid just isn't a bargain anymore no matter how you measure it.) Then I'd shop for an AC inverter, searching Amazon and browsing You Tube until I learned enough about them to decide intelligently what size I need and know what size the battery can support, and to decide if I really need a pure-sine inverter or not. (Pure sine costs significantly more, but is much safer for appliances and, especially, electronics.) Then I'd buy correctly-sized wires and a fuse to connect the inverter to the battery, use an existing 12-volt charger I probably already have and my generator to keep it topped off, and call it good enough for this year. Then next year I'd add a solar panel or three and an appropriate controller, and maybe (if you're having as much fun with this as I do) another battery and larger inverter as well. The next thing you know, you'll be recharging your tool batteries or laptops or whatever every single day on solar, and you'll be off and running making more and more of your own free power. Even better, you'll be in _control_ of all this. If something breaks, _you_ will be able to effortlessly diagnose and fix it. Not someone else. _You_.

Good luck, and may the swirling death-storms avoid us both!

There is a further point to your evolution above. I am also a solar duffer living in Florida. Went through basically same progression as you. But...it has now moved on to an 8K roof mounted battery backed up Enphase system. Guess I can't define it as a solar hobby anymore. Several of my neighbors and I were very appreciative of the power when Ian took the grid down for two weeks.

I do still maintain my 800w separate system that keeps 400ahs of lifepo4 batteries charged. I run a few small fans and room size air cleaner along with a tv. So, my duffer system is still working! And yes, I still tinker with it. Thanks Will Prowse and DIY Forum!
Thanks Rabbit! I bought and love the Licitti AC box!

 

[djlinux]

The inverter has its own off/on switch. The red "lever"-type switch is a main shutoff, and the inverter has a push-button.

That main switch does not turn off the internal mppt. I am sure the two leds are not drawing much power, but I would have preferred the mppt had a shut off.

 

[cyobytm]

hello guys ,
i just made my own lifepo4 battery and i put it into a Licitti power box , but the dc v is fluctuating a lot , is this normal ?