Firefly Part II: Electric Boogaloo
Well, Its happening again.
One of my favorite upgrades of Nymeria is the battery and electrical system. One of the first upgrades we made was to add four Firefly Oasis batteries (465Ah, 5.58Kwh) . They were and are considered near top of the line for AGM batteries. About a year after install they began to fail. Firefly worked with us and replaced them early last year.
Well, its now been over a year, and they are dying again. As we speak we are down to about 250Ah. Now that is totally still functional for normal living. We can go pretty much 24 hours fully powered with that. But its slowly getting worse and we are not normal users. We use A LOT of power and we expect to use more with another planned upgrade (secrets, stay tuned). I’m actively working with Firefly to see how best we can resolve this issue.
Well, in the mean time, we’ve decided to throw in the towel and just “do it right” this time. Not that we didn’t last time, we just compromised a bit due to cost. At the time, a full equivalent (400Ah) storage in Lithium batteries was going to be over $10k. Over 3x as much a the Fireflys. Well, prices have come down significantly and we have just ordered 800Ah of LiFePo4 (Lithium Iron Phosphate) batteries.
Not only will we essentially double our capacity, but there are many other advantages to going lithium. The batteries themselves are half the weight and slightly smaller. We will get more voltage at lower charge levels (better for sustaining inverter functionality). The battery will stay healthier longer as our usage is more suited to a lithium battery than a Lead Acid. For example, we may go several days without a 100% charge. AGMs tend to like to stay mostly charged. They don’t last long if left at lower states of charge for long periods of time. This should give us several days of normal operation with little to no sun to recharge and little negative effect on the battery.
The big difference this time? Ill be doing the work myself. Ready to have some fun?
