Jon, no need to be sorry! Not insulted at all. I’m new to this stuff and I know it!
Would love to find someone to help me think through. Anyone live in Denver?
I am just up the road in Boulder, but I am pretty sure you will be able to do this by your self.
First, select the LiFePO4 battery you want to use. Here are just a few options (full disclosure I have a DIY battery and have not used any of these):
- Battleborn - heavily promoted, have good support and are a safe bet. However they are also expensive ($950 for 100Ah), and don't have any built in monitoring of the battery so you will also want to add a battery monitor (Victron BMV-712).
- PowerSonic - well established (50 years) battery company with good support, $750 for 100Ah with built in bluetooth.
- Renogy - these can sometimes be found on sale for $550, and you can add bluetooth monitoring for another $30. Renogy are a large US based importer and should be a fairly safe bet.
- reBel - smaller US based importer, selling the same batteries available on Amazon/eBay but with US support for $550 for 100Ah. Built in bluetooth, and seemingly decent reviews.
- Any number of batteries on Amazon (HQST, Aims, Chins etc) - $450 - $550 for 100Ah, some have built in monitoring, support maybe a bit spotty, some have decent reviews. Realize that all the manufacturers are using Chinese made cells, and BMS (including Battleborn) so you shouldn't be inherently turned off by direct from China.
- Lots of other options, Trojan, LiFeBlue, Relion, etc
You can then just remove the current lead acid battery, and install the new LiFePO4 battery (2 bolts). For the most part, all your current equipment will work fine with an LiFePO4 battery, so you can just use it for a few months and see how it performs. Contrary to popular belief, LiFePO4 batteries are far less picky about charging and the like than lead acid batteries.
Here are a couple of other thoughts:
Your stock Iota converter will fully charge your LiFePO4 battery, but it will also float charge the battery, which LiFePO4 doesn't really want, so don't leave it plugged in for more than a few days at a time. Many of us (with solar) never plug in anyway, so long term this may not matter.
The Blueseas battery isolator will keep the camper and truck connected most of the time due to the higher resting voltage of the LiFePO4 battery - if you park in the sun this is not a big deal, as the solar will charge both the camper and truck batteries. If you park in doors, you may want to pull the fuse on the negative wire to the battery isolator when not using the camper which will turn the battery isolator off. Reinstall the fuse when you use the camper. You won't get a whole lot of charge current to the battery, but that may or may not matter for your usage. In the future you can replace this with a DC-DC charger, an simple ignition controlled solenoid or a lithium specific isolator or just leave it as is.
Your ZAMP solar controller will also charge the LiFePO4 battery. If yours has the Lithium battery mode, switch it to that, if not use the GEL mode, it is close enough. In the future you may want to upgrade just the controller to a Victron MPPT which will be more efficient and has a lithium mode, but this is not urgent.
If you do end up with a battery without built in monitoring, you will want to add some sort of battery monitor when you install the battery. The standard is the Victron BMV-712 , this is a little more complicated to install, but there are plenty of instructional videos.
Edited by rando, 14 August 2021 - 02:55 PM.