I just bought two of these for my sailboat after much deliberation. From the tear down video they seem very well made and at $0.22 and Ahr they're a good deal. I know they don't have the low temp cut-off, but I'm in Grenada and am never going north of say 25 degree Latitude. So, it's not needed.
The rest of my system:
-580 watts solar fed through a BlueSky 3000 controller
-D400+ windgen
-8.5 kwh Kohler genset fed through a brand new Victron Multiplus charger/inverter 120 amp/3000 watt
I plan to set these in parallel as my boat is a 12 volt system for the 600 Ahr pool.
Now my questions:
1. What do I need to do as soon as I get these batteries? I've read about an initial charge and such. I can go to a dock for a couple days for shore power in order to do what needs to be done.
2. Placement. The only place I can put these things is where the current batteries are. They are setup in the engine/genset compartment. Is heat going to be an issue? Currently the batteries do get up near 100 degrees F. Is this okay for lifepo?
3. My current batteries are Duracell AGMs that never were what they should have been. I did the initial charge on them at the doc before using them, but they just have never held up. The store down here would not take them back because they would pass a load test. However, I had an electrician look, we did a capacity test and they were never the 245 Ahrs as advertised. They continually got weaker and weaker until now I am lucky if they make it through the night.
Being in the Caribbean sucks as warranties are a difficult thing. Even Duracell refuses to stand behind their 12 month free replacement program because of where I am. I've called East-Penn/Deka (the manufacturer), and they want to avoid blame also. However, the claim representative said he will see what he can do for me.
Basically, I want to do everything right so I don't have any issues. Those AGMs were $2300 (the Caribbean pirates do exist) and that hurts.
Thanks for reading
The rest of my system:
-580 watts solar fed through a BlueSky 3000 controller
-D400+ windgen
-8.5 kwh Kohler genset fed through a brand new Victron Multiplus charger/inverter 120 amp/3000 watt
I plan to set these in parallel as my boat is a 12 volt system for the 600 Ahr pool.
Now my questions:
1. What do I need to do as soon as I get these batteries? I've read about an initial charge and such. I can go to a dock for a couple days for shore power in order to do what needs to be done.
2. Placement. The only place I can put these things is where the current batteries are. They are setup in the engine/genset compartment. Is heat going to be an issue? Currently the batteries do get up near 100 degrees F. Is this okay for lifepo?
3. My current batteries are Duracell AGMs that never were what they should have been. I did the initial charge on them at the doc before using them, but they just have never held up. The store down here would not take them back because they would pass a load test. However, I had an electrician look, we did a capacity test and they were never the 245 Ahrs as advertised. They continually got weaker and weaker until now I am lucky if they make it through the night.
Being in the Caribbean sucks as warranties are a difficult thing. Even Duracell refuses to stand behind their 12 month free replacement program because of where I am. I've called East-Penn/Deka (the manufacturer), and they want to avoid blame also. However, the claim representative said he will see what he can do for me.
Basically, I want to do everything right so I don't have any issues. Those AGMs were $2300 (the Caribbean pirates do exist) and that hurts.
Thanks for reading