Conversion to LiFePO4???

[ph411tx]

I'm so confused. I've looked at putting Lithium batteries on the boat, but one site says "keep the batteries between 20% and 80%", the next site says that if you don't charge to 100% the cell leveling function of the BCS never kicks in. I thought the whole idea of a BCS was that IT knew how much to charge, how fast to charge, and when to stop charging. Again, I'm so confused.

Also, I'd like to use Lithium for the starter battery, but everything I read says you need a special charger for Lithium. Isn't the alternator on my motor going to charge the battery?

For my total solution, I'd like to put a 36v single battery for the trolling motor, a 16v (16.9v) battery for the Livescope and Echomaps, and a 12v starter battery, but I can't find a single source/solution.

I'm open to expertise, speculation, and SWAGS or a pointer to a vendor who can help.

 

[RippnLipz]

I run all lithium. One 100ah crank/house and two 60ah for the 24v trolling motor. Never bother to regulate charge percentages. Boat is plugged in when its not on the water. A lot of what you hear is true...but its also a bit misleading. The truth is the BMS on your battery will fail long before you get any of the benefit of running some 20-80 charge/discharge regimen. Just get good brand name battery's and fish em down and charge em up and they will serve you well. As far as a lithium starter battery, you need to be sure you buy the proper one for that. You just cant use any lithium for a starter it needs to meet ALL specs required by your motor. I run Mercury motors and Mercury actually has a recommended battery for use with SOME of their motors...not all. Make sure your motor is compatible...you dont want to burn up an alternator. You will need a charger that has a lithium charging mode. I use a NOCO genius pro 10/3, it has been a decent charger.

 

[Nitro929]

To start, I am no expert on this. This has been my experience with my boat.
I have 3 100amp hr. lithium's for my trolling motor (love them), still have an agm cranking battery. I have a noco 10/4 charger that has a switch for charging lithium, agm, and lead acid batteries. Graphs? I have just installed 2 12" HDS pros with active target2. I am a little tired of my cranking battery going dead, so I went a little over the top and installed a 200amp lithium battery just for the graphs and added a noco single 10amp charger for that. I've had the trolling batteries for about 2 years now and have always left them plugged in 24/7 when the boat was not in use. Now that I have read the article about charge recommendations for the lithium batteries, I plan on adding some switches to the chargers so I can isolate the lithium batteries and keep the agm battery on charge when I park the boat. I have taken the boat out now 3 days from sunrise to close to sunset without charging the batteries to see how they handled the use had no problems with either my trolling motor or my graphs. I fish mostly in the San Diego area (the 3 days were in Yuma on the Colorado River) and anyone familiar with our lakes knows is a 2-minute run is pretty much it to get from one end to the other, so the cranking battery does not have much of a chance to charge. The other thing I like about my set up is that Nitro installed a switch so I could jump the motor from one of my trolling batteries if the cranking battery went dead. I prefer this set up as opposed to a 36v battery for the trolling motor. As for a BCS/BMS system built into the batteries I read that you can fully charge the batteries every once in a whie to reset those. I don't know if that's true or not.
Whatever you choose, good luck with it and be safe on the water.