Wednesday, January 25, 2017

Re: [Electric Boats] lithium management question

 

Hi

The batteries interest me.
 
I am a little west of Sault Saint Marie in Canada. I have been following closely considering switching to electric.
 
          Don
                sailadventures at gmail

  



From: "George Ojdrovich go@springsips.com [electricboats]" <electricboats@yahoogroups.com>
To: electricboats@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Tuesday, January 24, 2017 1:13 PM
Subject: Re: [Electric Boats] lithium management question

 
John-

here is my experience with lithium on my Tartan 34C sailboat

Original battery pack was (16) cells, 260AH and a distributed BMS.  I made the mistake of not disconnecting everything over the first winters storage and completely drained and wrecked my Thundersky cells. I think the little circuit boards for the BMS had a slow drain all winter.

I had the system redesigned with (20) CALB 180AH cells and a centralized BMS (Orion). The first winter I disconnected the BMS, removed the jumper between my (2) ten cell  battery boxes— totally isolating the batteries. I took voltage measurements in October. In May, absolutely nothing had changed. Connected things, dropped the boat in the water and motored to my slip.

I have heard it is recommended to leave the cells at 50% SOC more or less, but I left them closer to 90 to 95% SOC.

Second winter-  same

Third winter (now)-  same and I will expect the cells to be healthy in May when I get back to the boat.

I have not been able to measure any self discharge over these 7 months of cold storage. The spec is less than 3% per month which would be like 21% discharge over 7 months. I really don't think I've seen more than a couple of percent- at least by the basically unvarying voltage measurements.  And I can roughly confirm the battery capacity by the time required to recharge the pack- example- if the BMS says I have discharged 40% capacity, I find it takes about 4.5 to 5 hours at 15 amps to recharge. 

The boat is on Lake Superior-  extremely cold and long winters (sub zero)

Regarding the original 16 Thundersky cells- last summer I decided to try to revive them with a charging protocol recommended by the manufacturer. They were basically at zero voltage. To my surprise I believe all but three or four of the cells are now good. I will know better in the spring when I return to them and measure their voltage.  If they prove good I'll be trying to find someone who wants some high capacity cells at essentially give away cost.

George O.


On Jan 24, 2017, at 10:31 AM, John Acord jcacord@gmail.com [electricboats] <electricboats@yahoogroups.com> wrote:


I'm making the move to lithium.  I'm OK with charging & BMS, and it will be a 100 AH stack.

What I would like to know is how to manage the batteries when the boat is idle for periods of time.  We tend to park the boat for three or four months in the winter.

What is the best practice when the batteries are idle for periods of time?

thanks,
John A.

-- 
Flatwater Electronics
www.flatwaterfarm.com
"Neurosurgery for computer looms."




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Posted by: Don Harben <sailadventures@rogers.com>
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