With the ability to accept and discharge very high currents, any associated wiring and circuit protection for LFP batteries must be up to the task and tailored to suit.Īll LFP banks require a comprehensive Battery Management System that offers reverse polarity protection, individual cell balancing, charge voltage and current limitation, management and emergency disconnection, battery and alternator temperature sensing, discharge current limitation and management – plus visual/audible alarms. LFP batteries will also provide a much greater number of charge cycles than the equivalent capacity LA battery, and finally they are also considerably lighter than any type of LA battery, which can make a big difference to a sailing yacht’s balance and performance. The same when they are fully charged – the BMS should shut off the charging source automatically at around 14.2V to prevent them from being overcharged. Thermal runaway and fire is the risk of badly installed lithium boat batteries. You can even discharge LFP completely without doing them any harm, although most built-in Battery Management System (BMS) will shut them down at around 12V, which is equivalent to around 10% SoC. In fact, they are happier to sit between 20%-80% SoC most of the time. The main benefits of LFP batteries are that they will accept a very rapid, high-current recharge, and they can be discharged to almost empty without the need to be regularly recharged to 100% State of Charge (SoC) as you have to with Lead-Acid (LA) batteries. This effectively rules out the use of old electric car batteries as there is no real way to transfer the same complex protection system they were originally designed to operate under.Įlectrically propelled yachts will usually have a higher voltage system (usually 48V, 72V or 96V), which needs a very carefully devised control system.įor these purposes it’s tempting to incorporate lithium-ion cells of higher energy density, such as Lithium Cobalt (LiCoO2), but this would require professional design and installation, and be very expensive.īesides, if you can’t insure your boat with this type of battery installed, then why would you do it? Why choose LFP batteries? Use of automotive lithium-ion blends with such elements as nickel, cobalt and manganese are strongly discouraged for use on a boat as they are far more prone to ‘thermal runaway’ should they fail. Lithium boat batteries make induction cooking on board a possibility
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