Hi I need to replace my leisure
battery in in my self build van. I can't justify the expense of a lithium
battery but am interested in a lead crystal
battery or lead carbon, price wise they fall between an AGM
battery and a lithium one. There are some bold claims made for them but at the price don't want to make a mistake. Has anyone any experience of these?
We have
solar no ehu which isn’t always kind to batteries especially this year when there has been a lot of not being used
One of the advantages of the Lead Carbon
battery over the standard Lead Acid
battery is that the Lead Carbon does not mind being left in a PSOC (Partial State of Charge), whereas the Lead Acid
battery prefers to be recharged to full as soon as possible for optimum life.
Having a PSOC-compatible
battery is ideal for the typical Wild Camper as on the typical trip, you never know when your next full charge will come.
Lithium Batteries are also fine at PSOC - and in fact, can prefer it - so again are great for Wild Camping, and have a lot of other advantages of Lead Acid batteries (Lead Carbon or otherwise). But initial buying cost is not one of them!
If you can afford the upfront price of Lithium, it is worth going for as in the longer term they are usually the better value solution.
Apart from initial Price, the two 'gotchas' for Lithium are cold-temp charging and monitoring.
1. Cold Temp charging must be avoided unless your batteries can manage and/or prevent it. Adding on extra circuitry to manage this can add a fair bit of cost and complexity, especially if doing it for just one
battery.
2. You cannot use a simple voltmeter to check on a Lithium
Battery. The difference between full and just about empty is too small in terms of voltage difference to be able to tell. You need to install an SOC
Battery Monitor for this at an additional cost. Handy thing to have anyway of course, but it is not simply an option with Lithium but a requirement.
I've not seen one yet as not landed in the UK, but the Poweroad Infinity Sub-Zero has both 'gotchas' above covered within the actual
battery and looks like a great option. The cheaper Poweroad Base does not have
battery monitoring or cold charging (it might have protection preventing it though? no sure if it does or not).
www.alpha-batteries.co.uk
