This Could Have Ended In Total Disaster

Only a few more days and it's CHRISTMAS! 

But before we can sit down with our friends and fellow campers, I had to take on "The Battery Project".

We had long since noticed that our start batteries were getting weak and so did our house batteries. After long considerations back and forth, I ordered 1 300amp Lithium Iron Phosphate battery and 2 AGM 95amp start batteries. Even though they were ordered from 2 different sources, they arrived together yesterday on a FEDEX truck. Stuff we order is usually dropped off at the host station from where we can pick it up.

The 3 cardboard boxes were pretty heavy, though the Lithium battery is actually much lighter than our four 6V flooded acid batteries.

First order of the day was to remove our old batteries. Beginning with the start batteries (also called Chassis batteries) I removed the connectors and wires. Being also AGMs they were heavy enough to lift out of the compartment. The first one still looked OK, except the usual dirt and dust. Hauling out the second I found this:

Obviously, the battery had exploded and one side being ripped open. Looking inside, everything was blackened with signs of a previous fire. I hadn't been able to see that while the battery was still in this tight compartment, but wondered how we had been able to even start the bus when we went dumping. The cause of this battery failure is most likely an overcharge with ongoing excessive heat developing. Never before had I seen such a battery damage. Because of the weakness of the battery pack I had used our external charger with 40amps, which probably had been too much.

Anyway, I was glad that I now had 2 new AGMs to put in their place.

Next was the Lithium battery, which was easy to put in place, as it takes less space than the previous 6V Trojans. The Lithium got connected to our solar charge controller.

New batteries in place

I had been working for hours in the hot sun and got pretty exhausted in the late afternoon, and it was finally time to rest into the evening hours.

After dark we sat inside when suddenly all lights died. What in the world had happened now?

With a light in my hand I went outside and connected my multimeter to the Lithium. To my big surprise it showed only 10.3V. I knew that Lithium batteries shut down when reaching 10.5V but how could this battery have lost so much power? It had shown around 13.3V when installed.

The only reason I can think of is that it wasn't fully charged at 14.4V and that I had been running our inverter from it. And outside we have some Christmas lights. The only help for the moment was to move the inverter connection to the start batteries, which I did. It worked through the evening and the night until this morning.

With the sunrise I looked at my solar charger, but it was dead. The solar charger needs power from the battery to function. Without power it cannot start utilizing the power from the sun. Only way to start charging that Lithium was with an external charger from f.ex our generator. However our mobile charger is old and cannot be used for Lithium batteries. So the need was to get a lithium charger from town. Luckily, I found a little one at Auto Zone in Holtville.

After "waking up" the Lithium I could finally use the solar charger for the rest of the day. But I also learned that it can take up to a full day to fully charge a 300amp Lithium battery. Because daylight hours close to Christmas are short, I have to continue the charging process tomorrow.

The "Battery Project" proved to be time consuming, but at the end of the day, I am happy we didn't have a fire destroying our motorhome. The right thing to do, of course, is replacing batteries in time, after noticing they won't keep the power after use. Too much charge and they can blow up.

And while we are talking about fire danger another warning:

Our neighbour had actually flames licking up the side of his Class A, because his BBQ had been placed too close to the wall and being left unattended for a short time igniting the paint on his rig. Luckily he had a water sprayer handy and could douse the beginning fire. It can happen, folks, we all can make mistakes.