Lithium Upgrade

[ssrgeoff]

Just stumbled across this forum as we are researching upgrading our camper to lithium. Our camper will start production soon and we are deciding if it would be worth it to pay for an additional upgrade. Our current option we selected has the dual battery 6v 225ah over the standard 75ah. Because we went with the Hawk Side Dinette the only two higher options I see would be going with a single lithium 135ah or the dual lithium 270ah. We are not full time campers, we will probably spend a week or two out on the road a year and the rest of the time would be extended weekends. My wife does want the ability to work on the road if needed which requires powering a laptop and a full size monitor. Plus, we have Starlink. I would only be looking at upgrading to a single lithium with the plan of adding a second later down the road. Trying to minimize all the expenses with paying for a camper on top of the truck we just bought.

Here is also what is provided upgrading into Lithium batteries.

REDARC BCDC -- (25 amp DC/DC 3 stage battery charger)
Upgraded Wiring
Upgraded Breakers
Victron Energy Blue Smart Charger IP22 -- (12V / 30amp /1 output)

If you had the opportunity to upgrade, would you? I don't see a new management system offered for our camper like the front dinette so not sure why that is, but I do like the Redarc display over the MPPT controller. I know woodworking but clueless with electronics so hoping I can get some insight. Sorry for the first long winded post, look forward to learning from this forum and sharing any info I may have.

 

[ckent323]

Noting that I have installed three Solar systems so far, two on campers and one on a boat.

If I were buying a camper now I would have solar wiring pre-installed and house battery wiring pre-installed. I would probably have whatever standard AC/DC power interface, battery charger and fuse box FWC presently uses installed by the factory (my FWC has the Iota DLS-30 IQ4). If they use Victron that is great.

After receipt of the camper I would buy and install a 100 Ah LiFePO4 battery by BattleBorn or Victron or Renogy or equivalent (~$900). I would also buy a Victron 100/30 Smart solar controller ($226) and a Victron BVM-712 battery monitor ($207). I would buy the largest LG, Panasonic, SunPower or REC solar panel - say 360 W to 420 W Solar panel that would fit in the space between my roof vents (~$325) along with a roof entry gland and solar cable (~$50). I would install the solar and battery system myself and save a lot of money.

I don't know what the wiring upgrade is for so not able to comment on that.

Assuming your truck has a smart alternator the Redarc DC/DC charger is probably fine. Wiring from truck to camper battery should be a minimum of 6 ga but better if it is 4 ga.

I don't understand the inclusion of the Victron Blue Smart charger. Unless it is a replacement for the IOTA DLS-30


Our FWC Keystone camper has two 6v, 220 Ah AGM batteries and once they get to end of life I will replace them with a 100Ah Lithium battery. My truck does not have a smart alternator and I do not need a DC/DC charger. I installed a BlueSea ACR between the truck and camper but the truck and camper are typically not connected because I found that the power from our 360 W LG panel provides all the power we need. Our camper has an IOTA DLS-30 AC/DC charger with an IQ-4 dongle. The solar controller is a Victron 100/30 Smart Solar and the battery monitor is a Victron BVM-702 with bluetooth dongle (old model before bluetooth was built into the BVM-712 model). I used a GO Power solar entry gland on the roof and MC4 solar cables.

I hope this information is somewhat helpful.


Craig

 

[Dirtroadsavant]

Welcome!

I would not hesitate to go with the upgrade to a lithium system. I, too, am pretty lost on diy electricity (aka “devil spark”) and would choose to have it done as part of the package.

If you have just discovered this forum and are nearing production, I would urge you to poke around regarding other options and choices. This place is a gold mine.

 

[ssrgeoff]

I don't know what the wiring upgrade is for so not able to comment on that.

Assuming your truck has a smart alternator the Redarc DC/DC charger is probably fine. Wiring from truck to camper battery should be a minimum of 6 ga but better if it is 4 ga.

I don't understand the inclusion of the Victron Blue Smart charger. Unless it is a replacement for the IOTA DLS-30

Thanks Craig for all the information. So what I was told, not 100% if this is correct but I was told 8ga wiring. I haven't looked into the trucks alternator, it's a 23 Ram 3500 single 220a alternator.

Welcome!

I would not hesitate to go with the upgrade to a lithium system. I, too, am pretty lost on diy electricity (aka “devil spark”) and would choose to have it done as part of the package.

If you have just discovered this forum and are nearing production, I would urge you to poke around regarding other options and choices. This place is a gold mine.

Thanks, I decided this afternoon to make the jump into Lithium. Figure I can always add a second battery and this would be a good starting platform that I hope is upgradeable without completely rewiring the camper going from acid to lithium. The weight savings is also a plus. We had to make the move rather quickly as our camper should be starting production in the next month so the decision was made and took the moment to add other features. Thanks again for your replies.

 

[ckent323]

I am interpreting that the wire upgrade is between truck and camper batteries and not the camper wiring?

Assuming that is the case I think 8 ga is the minimum wire size for 30 A and if that is an upgrade that is strange to me.

Here is my thinking, the one way distance between truck battery and camper battery is usually about 20 - 25 feet. If your charger can send 30A steady state then 8 ga is the minimum size for a 3% voltage drop. For 40 A or a longer than 25 foot one way distance you need a minimum of 6 ga.

Disclosure: I do not have any hands on experience with a smart alternator or using a DC to DC charger between the truck and camper. It would be good if Vic Harder, ntsqd or one of the other people who have used these devices jumps in.

Ref:

https://www.bluesea.com/resources/1437


Note: the distances in this chart are circuit length so round trip distance. (i.e. if truck battery to camper battery is 25 feet then circuit length is 50 ft)

I hope this is helpful.

Craig

 

[Vic Harder]

CKent is correct, as usual. The bad news is that I have never heard of the factory doing a wire gauge upgrade on a customer's truck. The factory trailer wiring is usually 14g, and not adequate.

The good news is that you can pay someone who has a good reputation for doing this right (KP comes to mind) or you can spend a lot more time learning and do it yourself. Personally, I like to know every inch of my camper/truck so that I can fix anything regardless of where I am.

If you are leaning towards having the factory do the install, that certainly is simple and always upgradable down the road. Let us know what you decide. We are more than willing to help!

 

[ntsqd]

This thread caught my eye because I think that we're on the cusp of going lithium ourselves.

Another wire sizing resource: https://www.ancorproducts.com/en/Resources

No smart alternators around here, so I'm only a little help there. Since a DC-DC converter trades current for voltage, the voltage drop to them isn't as critical as it is with direct charging a lead-acid battery. Meaning you may not need 4ga. or 6ga. between the truck and the camper. At 25 feet total circuit length and accepting up to 10% voltage drop 8 ga. is good for 50A. I suspect that will work fine.
The caveat here is that the converter should be mounted as close to the camper battery as is reasonably possible. This so that the length of the wires where any voltage drop will matter are short.

Our first camper taught me to build out the solar charging system first, then worry about truck connectivity. Of course I went about that backwards before I got educated. There are a few on this forum who don't have a truck electrical connection at all. Depends on your power use and needs if that will work for you or not.


You don't show where you're located, but here on the Lower Left US Coast I've found that even a mere 100W solar panel can stay ahead of our power use. Given the remote work possibility I would definitely go as big on the panel as will fit. You might miss the capacity that you don't buy, but you won't regret any extra that you do buy (except when paying the one-time bill). Our last camper has a 160W panel on it and we rarely seemed to need the truck to charge the camper batteries. Except when the vehicle is parked in our backyard between trips, then I keep it plugged in with a "smart charger".

 

[Vic Harder]

Thom, the 8awg wire will work from a current carrying capacity. With the Victron Orion gear, we also have the ability to tweek the settings it uses to detect "engine running". With this, we can compensate for voltage drop. IF the voltage drop is too great, we can also run a separate wire to the ignition circuit or to a manually operated switch, to tell the Orion when the engine is running. To keep it simpler, I like fatter wires...

Pardon me while I do some math to illustrate this. Let's say we have a typical crew cab truck with a FWC/ATC on the back, the camper batteries are mounted towards the front of the camper. That makes for a 25' or so one way run. I have no idea how long the run would be on stock wiring, as it is pretty convoluted and hugs the frame and such, it could well be longer. If the AGM batteries in the truck are fully charged (12.7V) then we want the Orion to be set to "not running" when the voltage is at 12.8 or so. Let's assume the (LiFePo4) batteries in the camper are fairly discharged, and sitting around 13.1V.

We then start the truck, and the Orion sees 14V or so coming from the alternator and says, OK, that's more than 12.8, so I should turn on. So it turns on and starts pulling 30+A from the alternator so it can put out 30A to the batteries which are eager to drink in all that good juice. 14V less 10% voltage drop = 12.6V. That's less than the "truck not running" setting, so the Orion shuts off. Once off, the voltage rises back to 14V and the Orion turns back on, and repeats the cycle...

To overcome this, you would have to use the manual turn on function of the Orion.

The situation is worse with Smart alternators, as they may put out even less than 14V.

 

[ntsqd]

There's the difference, I was looking at 25 feet for total length and you're looking at 25' being the one way length. 25' total length didn't raise any red flags with me because our first camper had a total length of something like 16' (I measured it rather carefully). According to my link above for 10% VD, when you push the total length out to 50' the max ampacity of an 8 ga. is only 30A.

It gets pretty sticky pretty fast. If the alt output is exactly 14.0 VDC then the Voltage Drop (VD) dumps you below the threshold. However if the output is 14.4 VDC then the VD only drops you to 12.96 VDC and that's above the "truck running" threshold. who'd have thought 0.4 VDC could be so important?

FWIW after going thru some pain early on in learning about this stuff I try to always think in terms of total circuit length.

 

[Jon R]

I’ve said this before in other threads, so sorry for the repeat, but I thought might help the OP.

Just for a reference point I have a full size crew cab long bed truck with a smart alternator and a Grandby front dinette that has its battery compartment at the rear corner. My total wire run from the truck battery to the camper battery compartment is approximately 30 feet one way. 6 awg Ancor Type 3 wire works with my Victron Orion 12/12-30 (30 amps output) without it doing the cycling Vic described.

 

[Vic Harder]

I’ve said this before in other threads, so sorry for the repeat, but I thought might help the OP.

Just for a reference point I have a full size crew cab long bed truck with a smart alternator and a Grandby front dinette that has its battery compartment at the rear corner. My total wire run from the truck battery to the camper battery compartment is approximately 30 feet one way. 6 awg Ancor Type 3 wire works with my Victron Orion 12/12-30 (30 amps output) without it doing the cycling Vic described.

That's a good reference point, Jon.

 

[pawleyk]

FWIW, we just had a guy stop by the shop who had ordered the lithium package fresh from FWC. They HAD done a very nice job of installing 8awg wiring from the truck to the camper.

However, it reduced to 10awg from the plug back. We were still seeing a voltage drop of almost 2v under any sort of vehicle fed charge load through the Manager 30.

Since 8awg is barely big enough as it is, and the inside wiring was never upgraded, the manager 30 was still cycling on and off as the input voltage would drop below 12v when charging.

We upgraded the rest of the wire to 6awg and it worked as it should.

Another note, Redarc DCDC chargers (manager 30 included) have a signal port for an ignition line, basically to let the charger know when the rig is running, apart from the voltage sensing feature. This is the ideal way around smart alternators, and will also help to compensate for voltage-drop cycling. This line was installed in the camper side, but was simply cut at the plug. There was no corresponding wire from the truck.

No idea why, that's a question for FWC.

 

[Jack]

8 AWG is hit or miss without an engine on/off sense line. When we swapped out our Tacoma for a Ford Ranger, I reused the 8 AWG wiring from the Tacoma. I bypassed the FWC plug and wired straight to the Victron DC-DC (over the side of the bed, with an Anderson connector tied to the side of the camper near the left front tie-down access). With the Ranger, this worked about half the time - start the engine, see if the DC-DC was charging. If not, turn off engine. Repeat until charging persisted. Ran 6 AWG and no more issues.

 

[Jon R]

8 AWG is hit or miss without an engine on/off sense line. When we swapped out our Tacoma for a Ford Ranger, I reused the 8 AWG wiring from the Tacoma. I bypassed the FWC plug and wired straight to the Victron DC-DC (over the side of the bed, with an Anderson connector tied to the side of the camper near the left front tie-down access). With the Ranger, this worked about half the time - start the engine, see if the DC-DC was charging. If not, turn off engine. Repeat until charging persisted. Ran 6 AWG and no more issues.

Hi Jack. That’s good info for people trying to decide on wire gage. It would be even better if you could estimate the total length of the wire run from truck battery to the dc to dc charger, and give the model of charger so we know the current involved. Thanks.

 

[pawleyk]

For what it's worth, we run 4awg on all of our DCDC installs because we know it'll always work and it's not much more expensive /ft in the long run.

As a shop that does a reasonably high volume of installations, it's just not worth it to us to cut down to the bare minimum wire size when there's really no downside to simply sizing up a bit to ensure it'll work no matter what.

Hi Jack. That’s good info for people trying to decide on wire gage. It would be even better if you could estimate the total length of the wire run from truck battery to the dc to dc charger, and give the model of charger so we know the current involved. Thanks.

 

[pawleyk]

6awg is probably perfectly adequate for all truck camper, 30 amp DCDC installations.