AGM battery brands

[Tx J]

Originally Posted by s/v Jedi

For house bank I am a fan of Lifeline who invented AGM iirc, like Sonnenschein did the modern gel cells. I have two AGM house banks, one uses the L16T batteries, the other 6CT. These can be had in either 6V or 2V versions.

Per Wiki, Gates Rubber patented the first AGM, the Cyclon, in 1972. The Cyclon is now made by Enersys' Cyclon division, Odyssey is also part of Enersys.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VRLA_battery#History

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EnerSys

I use Odyssey for start batteries that can do house bank duty when the real house bank is offline. These are TPPL batteries and I believe Odyssey invented that? They are great, I have 2 banks, each with 2x the PC2150. They last a very long time.

Odyssey apparently did first produce the TPPLs. The Odyssey Battery Technical Manual, p.21, FAQs, says:
"What is so special about thin plate pure lead
technology? Is it a new technology?
The answer lies in the very high purity (99.99%) of our
raw lead materials, making our product very special.
The technology is not new; the sealed lead recombinant
technology was invented and patented by us back in 1973."

I got my first Odyssey battery a few months ago and it seems to be good stuff. The Odyssey Tech Manual also seems to give them some almost LiFePO4 battery properties, chg/dischg, DoD tolerances, etc.

People like the Firefly batteries and I think they may be good… possibly even better than the ones listed above, but they can’t be compared to LiFePO4 at all nor with the lead acid king of house banks: the A600 line of 2V gel cells from Sonnenschein.
A600

Y'all might have a look at the Leoch Battery LiFePO4 batteries too, they make a whole range of LiFePO4 in 6/12/24/48V to 350Ah. They have a huge range of other types too from 2V up, in all styles [agm, gel, wet la,, etc., to ~3000Ah. ].
https://www.leoch.us/component/searc...all&Itemid=434

[Eric.martin]

Odyssey every time. Treated right you can get 12-15 years usage. Well worth the extra ££££££’s

[Simi 60]

Originally Posted by Eric.martin

Odyssey every time. Treated right you can get 12-15 years usage. Well worth the extra ££££££’s

Can you link to the variant we would use for a house bank?
I can't find anything suitable, only small stuff more suited as starts.

Add: found them but not in Australia

[merrydolphin]

I personally would not mess with AGM. Do your research and you will see the Lithium is the way to go for so many reasons. And cheaper in the long run. And soooo much easier and faster to charge.
I will not go back to AGM. Bang for the buck and good deep 6V flooded is better than AGM. Now have Lithium and wow, what a difference.

[Simi 60]

Originally Posted by merrydolphin

I personally would not mess with AGM. Do your research and you will see the Lithium is the way to go for so many reasons. And cheaper in the long run. And soooo much easier and faster to charge.
I will not go back to AGM. Bang for the buck and good deep 6V flooded is better than AGM. Now have Lithium and wow, what a difference.

I have done my research and don't believe you

Prove your point by pricing me up a 600ah @ 24v system in LP4 or a 900ah @ 24v in your 6v trojans IN AUSTRALIA

Report back.

[Factor]

Originally Posted by Paul L

You nailed it with this comment. I tried to buy a watermaker while in Australia. I was fully expecting to pay more for the local service/delivery. When I went to negotiate the unit price with the store owner, I gave him my price buying direct in the US plus shipping. He said he couldn't negotiate with me because he was paying more for the unit wholesale in Australia than I could buy it for retail in the US, This is all without GST.

Buy it from the US then, organise your own import clearance, pay duty and gst, and frieght, install it yourself, and deliver your own warranty and carry your own spares inventory. Easy

[Paul L]

Originally Posted by Factor

Buy it from the US then, organise your own import clearance, pay duty and gst, install it yourself, and deliver your own warranty. Easy

That's what I ended up doing with my watermaker, except I got the GST back when we cleared out after months of arguing.

[merrydolphin]

Originally Posted by Simi 60

I have done my research and don't believe you

Prove your point by pricing me up a 600ah @ 24v system in LP4 or a 900ah @ 24v in your 6v trojans IN AUSTRALIA

Report back.

YouTube search “Don’t waste your money on batteries - the shocking truth I discovered testing RV batteries.

This video's loaded with in depth info. Yes, it is promoting a specific brand of batteries but will easily apply to other lithium brands.
You do understand that you can nearly get away with half ot the amp hrs ratings and nearly a quarter of the space and weight, (I went from 4X 6V Trojan 105 ‘s of about 450 AH. To 2 X 100 AH lithium’s and it was a nice improvement.
Disclaimer: i operate on 12V and no NOTHING about supply and purchase in Australia. Did tons of cruising but very sorry that I never got there!

Go through the entire video. There is a LOT of information there.

I hope that this helps you. And thanks for the come-back. Maybe get there some day.
PS. Don’t let RV throw you off. I have extensively lived and cruised on both ( mostly sailboats) and if you are off grid as I am with my diesel motorhome, it is very much like cruising a boat technically. I cruise the high deserts and forest/mountain areas for long periods doing astronomy and star gazing. Hard to use a telescope on a moving boat! Ha ha

[Simi 60]

Originally Posted by merrydolphin

YouTube search “Don’t waste your money on batteries - the shocking truth I discovered testing RV batteries.

This video's loaded with in depth info. Yes, it is promoting a specific brand of batteries but will easily apply to other lithium brands.

Yes, seen it

You do understand that you can nearly get away with half ot the amp hrs ratings and nearly a quarter of the space and weight, (I went from 4X 6V Trojan 105 ‘s of about 450 AH. To 2 X 100 AH lithium’s and it was a nice improvement.

Yes, I understand I need less in LP4
Weight and space is not an issue

Disclaimer: i operate on 12V and no NOTHING about supply and purchase in Australia.

There you go then.
If you did you would know that T105 trojans can cost double what an AGM can cost

You would also know that a quality LP4 bank, even at half the size can cost 4 x more.

[MVDarlin]

I replaced my flooded acid golf cart batteries with Optima sealed batteries after my bank failed because they were not serviced over a summer on the hard in Mexico. They can be mounted in any position and require no service. $300 each. I have 14 on the boat.

[Simi 60]

Originally Posted by MVDarlin

I replaced my flooded acid golf cart batteries with Optima sealed batteries after my bank failed because they were not serviced over a summer on the hard in Mexico. They can be mounted in any position and require no service. $300 each. I have 14 on the boat.

What sort?
Biggest I can find here is 75ah and $500 each
Our current 220ah AGM cost $375 each
I think a lithium bank would work out cheaper for us than going optina

https://www.batteriesdirect.com.au/s...4356/d31m.html

[merrydolphin]

Originally Posted by Simi 60

Yes, seen it



Yes, I understand I need less in LP4
Weight and space is not an issue



There you go then.
If you did you would know that T105 trojans can cost double what an AGM can cost

You would also know that a quality LP4 bank, even at half the size can cost 4 x more.

I already said that I know nothing about Australia and even tried to end with a complement. Don’t know why you have a chip on your shoulder? So happy battery hunting. Good luck and fair winds.

[Simi 60]

Originally Posted by merrydolphin

I already said that I know nothing about Australia and even tried to end with a complement. Don’t know why you have a chip on your shoulder? So happy battery hunting. Good luck and fair winds.

There is no chip on my shoulder champ.
Perhaps if you had read the very first post you would not have made the comment at all

Not after a lithium vs AGM vs lead discussion in this post
And it's Australia based, so freight is high, pointless pointing to cheap US Costco buys

[merrydolphin]

Originally Posted by Simi 60

There is no chip on my shoulder champ.
Perhaps if you had read the very first post you would not have made the comment at all

OK. I stand corrected. I didn’t see that sentence at the bottom of the OP. That indeed makes is different. Sorry.

[sailinglegend]

Originally Posted by merrydolphin

YouTube search “Don’t waste your money on batteries - the shocking truth I discovered testing RV batteries.

This video's loaded with in depth info.....

There are lots of good videos on YouTube but this isn't one of them!

He makes the fundamental mistake of trying to find the discharged Ah count on the AGMs when they are down to 50% state of charge - at the designed discharge current for the bank - by reading the voltage. Yes, it should be about 12.2v - but he should have known that is only after leaving the batteries to 'rest', with no charge or discharge, for about two hours. He does say he has never done battery discharge tests before!!!!!

This is a useful test to try 'at home' and you might have to go down to about 12.05v and then disconnect just one battery and let that rest for two hours and it should recover to about 12.2v. This assumes the correct C20 discharge current for the bank size which for a 400Ah bank is 400ah/20hrs = 20 amps. Later in the video he says the tests showed the discharge voltage for 50% capacity was 12.0v - BINGO!

Get to know you're boat with checks like this and you can see when the battery capacity is falling due to sulfation.