CBE 516 Charger for Lithium?

Alshymer

Full Member
Posts
571
Likes
269
Hi
I have just today found out after 7 years of using my 100ah Relion Lithium battery as recommended initially by Admin, that I never changed the Lead/Acid setting to Gel on the above charger!! Whoops.
I have a 2017 Ducato 2.3 multijet, no B2B, a 75/15 Victron MPPT solar charger and rarely use hook up.
Should I change the setting now to ‘Gel’ or continue as previously as I have never had a problem and the battery is still performing well?
Or perhaps I should change the CBE charger?
Regards
 
When I had a Relion battery and a CBE516 charger I left it on lead acid rather than Gel. The Gel has a slightly higher voltage of 14.3V but also comes with an 8 hour absorption phase before dropping back to a holding voltage of 13.8V. The lead acid setting is 14.1V and only has a 90 minute absorption phase before dropping back to a 13.5V holding voltage. The shorter absorption phase and lower holding voltage of the lead acid setting is kinder to the LiFePO4 battery. The 14.1V may slightly under charge the battery but when you are on an EHU you don’t need it full and this is also kinder to the battery long term. After 7 years without the lower voltage causing a problem I would definitely suggest sticking with the kinder setting.
 
Thank you for your reply. I was thinking much on the same lines so it is good to have it confirmed.
The main reason I asked the question is that I am changing the Relion for a 280 ah Eco Worthy battery although the Relion is still working well.
I couldn’t resist the price but just hope my current settings will be good for the new battery.
Kind regards
 
Look at what the battery spec says for charging voltages and use what fits that best.

Personally I would turn off the charger when battery are full rather than let it float. That's what I used to do on Gel settings before I got a couple of Victron 30A chargers that support Lifepo4. This is because I am rarely on sites but do use a generator to keep battery up in Winter
 
It's hard to get concrete proof of how charge profiles WRT floating alter a Lithium battery's life expectancy because the nature of the issue requires time and widespread lithium use simply hasn't been around long enough to find out. One thing that DOES seem to becoming very clear is that Lifepo4 isn't particularly fussy and actually very tolerant of charge profile which is born out by the fact that you've supposedly been charging them wrong for seven years and they are still working fine. Personally I'd leave it exactly as it is, it's obviously perfectly OK.
 
I think the battery manufacturers suggest using a Gel profile for charging because AGM profiles are likely to have too high a voltage and lead acid profiles may be too high or too low. The extended absorption phase of Gel is probably the lesser problem. However if like the CBE516 the Lead Acid profile voltage is very similar to the Gel one then the shorter absorption phase may make it the best choice. @merl I agree LiFePO4 are very tolerant and not fussy.
 
Okta said:
I think the battery manufacturers suggest using a Gel profile for charging because AGM profiles are likely to have too high a voltage and lead acid profiles may be too high or too low. The extended absorption phase of Gel is probably the lesser problem. However if like the CBE516 the Lead Acid profile voltage is very similar to the Gel one then the shorter absorption phase may make it the best choice. @merl I agree LiFePO4 are very tolerant and not fussy.
Click to expand...
Corrected, seems same as m y l acids which hit 14.4v, chart for lipo4
 
Last edited:
Charging Lithium to just 13.7 Volts get's you close enough to 100% to the extent that it's not worth worrying about the bit you're missing, yes you can take them a lot higher but it seems pointless, charging to 14.4 will probably result in swelling cells, I've never seen any evidence that swelling actually harms a cell but I personally don't see the point in taking a risk for an additional 1%. or so that you'll get over 13.7V.
Floating doesn't seem to harm nor help, no maintenance voltage either. There's good evidence that leaving them sitting idle at between 40%-70% slows down the calendar ageing process quite a bit but they seem to last ages anyway so....
All in all now they've come down to a price level close to lead they are a bit of a no brainer, as time goes by I think we'll see more people simply dropping them in as direct replacements as it becomes apparent that alternator charging isn't the issue it's been built up to be either.
 
I corrected my first post, my van charges at 14.4v lead acids and floats at 13.4/7, seems lipo 4 will be same but my solar reg has a switch fpr ;iths, i think this is because it cuts out once charged, unlike l acids which go into float and mantanance cycle, chart below fpr liths.
lipo 4 charge.jpg
 
I think the bit at the top of the chart is incorrect/misleading Trev because it suggests that lifepo4 needs 14.4V to charge to 100% and that's not true.
1752829282142.png

Here's a better chart showing cell voltage Vs state of charge Trev. This is per cell cell voltage so figure on the left side of the graph must be multiplied by 4 for a 12V battery so 3.6=14.4 and 3.4=13.6V. Note that the charge currents in the lines are all very high especially the top two lines, the lowest current in the bottom line represents 0.1C which would be 30A for a 100Ah battery and 90A for a 300Ah so still high, it shows that at lower charge currents you'll aproach100% at a lower voltage so with something like 5A from a solar panel you'll get to 99% charge at a very low voltage.
If I set my charge controller to 13.6 volts my 200Ah of lithium shows as charged to 99% on my shunt, I've done a capacity test to check and I get just over 200Ah from them so it's accurate. No need to go anywhere near 14.4V but having said that 14.4v (from an alternator) doesn't seem to harm them either, I've seen tests where they've been taken to 15V without serious issues so as I said previously lifep04 appears to be extremely tolerant and not fussy at all when it comes to charging voltage.
1752830867081.png
 
Geek said:
Sorry, I don't follow that. 0.1C is one tenth of the capacity.
So for a 100Ah battery, 0.1C is 10A and for a 300Ah battery it is 30A.
Where did you get 30A and 90A from?
Click to expand...
Yeh there's a typo in my text sorry but the maths is correct as there is no 0.1C curve. Take another look. The lowest line is 0.3C so that's 30A for a 100Ah battery and 90A for a 300Ah.
 
Regarding the 40% to 70%, my Lifepo4 has been in since November 2018 and I always aim for 100% SoC. 7 months of the year they will be back to 100% every day, during Winter months when I have to get the genny out its probably every 2 days.

There was no mention this 20-80% for storage when I bought them, was a while after it first got posted anywhere. My battery still perform as the day first fitted as well. Of course, I only pay for mine so everyone needs to be happy with what they do
 
Nabsim said:
Regarding the 40% to 70%, my Lifepo4 has been in since November 2018 and I always aim for 100% SoC. 7 months of the year they will be back to 100% every day, during Winter months when I have to get the genny out its probably every 2 days.

There was no mention this 20-80% for storage when I bought them, was a while after it first got posted anywhere. My battery still perform as the day first fitted as well. Of course, I only pay for mine so everyone needs to be happy with what they do
Click to expand...
Bear in mind that although you personally may be aiming for 100% your batteries will still spend a lot of their life NOT at 100% while you're actually using them and not STORING them. Calendar ageing Vs SOC has been real life tested and measured by a few different sources Neil, and calender ageing approximately doubles between the worst cases which are near flat or near full (10v and 13.6v respectively) and the optimum 50% (13.12v), however because lifepo4 ages so slowly in the first place this doubling only represents an increase of around 1% so hardly worth worrying about. 👍
As an aside it's been shown that operating and storing at high temperatures has a much worse effect on calender ageing than SOC, not something to concern us here though. 👍
 
Hi
Thanks for all the interesting comments
So, do people actually stop their batteries charging whilst not in use?
If so do they install an on/off switch in the solar charging cable or can one manage the Victron Smart Solar to stop charging at say 70%?
Thanks
 
I don’t have solar but I wouldn’t leave an idle leisure battery permanently charging when not using the van. On my previous motorhome I had an Efoy fuel cell which turned off when the battery was full and then stayed off for several weeks. Last year I let the LiFePO4 leisure battery drop to 13.1V and then switched the battery off for the rest of the winter lay up.
 
Alshymer said:
Hi
Thanks for all the interesting comments
So, do people actually stop their batteries charging whilst not in use?
If so do they install an on/off switch in the solar charging cable or can one manage the Victron Smart Solar to stop charging at say 70%?
Thanks
Click to expand...
If you want to stop the lithium being floated long term at 13.8 volts you can switch off the mains charger like Neil (Nabsim) says he does or you could switch the solar off at the panel isolator if you've got one or pull the fuse between panels and controller. Easiest way to leave the lithium sitting at approx 50% would be to re configure the solar settings with bulk/ float voltage set to 13.2-13.1volts which is what I USED to do over the winter during long layup periods.
I now use 13.7v and 13.6v, this leaves the batteries being stored very close to 100% but as I've already mentioned the additional calender ageing doesn't amount to much but more importantly for me 13.6v at the leisure battery means my starter battery is being held at 13.5v + and near perfectly maintained via my Gizmott maintainer.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Users who viewed this discussion (Total:57)

Back
Top