Any two years reviews for Firefly batteries?

[kmacdonald]

Originally Posted by sailorboy1

That's why I am going to put some in.

Based on my 4 years full time on the boat my use shouldn't draw the batteries less than 70%. The Firefly chart says that the batteries will last 9,000-13,500 cycles. Do I believe that? Hell no I don't believe that!!!

Trojan said my T105s would last 300 "cycles" and they only went less than 60% SOC twice and 50% SOC once and lasted 4 years. So that is really only 1 cycle far as what a "cycle" is suppose to be. So this "cycle" thing is just lab use hocus pocus.

If I divide 9,000 for the FF by 300 for the Trojans I get 30 times as long. Do I think my FFs are going to last 4 years x 30 = 120 years? Hell no. But if I get 10 years with less worry about PSOC conditions I will be happy.

I never worry about my 200 Ah Sams Club $90 6V golf cart batteries. When I kill them I get new ones.

[rgleason]

@phantomracer

I am expecting to recover some, or most,of the performance loss of the firefly batteries during the restorative charge this winter

You are in Marion. I am in RI. Do you take the batteries out of the boat or leave them in it during the winter? It appears they would be ok in this environment.
That is a beautiful boat.

[phantomracer]

Originally Posted by rgleason

@phantomracer
You are in Marion. I am in RI. Do you take the batteries out of the boat?
That is a beautiful boat.

I do not. Boat is in heated storage.

Even outside, charged batteries won't freeze

[sailorboy1]

Originally Posted by jbinbi

OK. But didn't the PS mag article say that just like all other AGMs, the Fifefly's needed to be brought back to 100% or they too 'walk back' towards a lower value? Maybe they just need to have this done on occasion, like an equalization process? Or was I not understanding something?
.

Yes you still need to get to 100% sometimes and the manual says to do it till the G31 116AH battery at 14.4V is accepting 0.5A. So more like just getting to 100% on a regular battery as the 14.4V is the absorption voltage. FF calls this a Restoration Charge.

But unlike a regular AGM the FF isn't losing capacity each time you don't get to 100%. Plus only Lifeline says you can equalize their AGMs and even then I think it is more of a "what's there to lose by trying" thing.

[jbinbi]

Originally Posted by sailorboy1

But unlike a regular AGM the FF isn't losing capacity each time you don't get to 100%. Plus only Lifeline says you can equalize their AGMs and even then I think it is more of a "what's there to lose by trying" thing.

Ah. This is important info. So you can be out for a week, bring the charge down to 25% over the night, get it back to 80%, back down for the week, and then if you can plug in overnight and get it back to 100%, you should be good to go, you haven't killed the number of cycles left? Or do you need to get it to 95% each day for this to be true. Or is it not true.

If what I think is true, then really what Lixxxx has over this is the ability to accept charge at 1C. But the cost is many X more for that. The FF is an excellent option.

[phantomracer]

And FF are a, pretty much, a direct swap for FLA unlike lithium.

In 5 seasons, iv always put the boat away, after each use, in a PSOC state. Even hauling at the end of the season, i don't charge it over the winter, just before launch the next season will i throw a battery charger on it..

This has killed 2 sets of Rolls FLA batteries in 4 years each set, the FF don't seem to care about this treatment!. Just now starting to see some performance hit, hope it can be recovered with a restorative charge.

My anecdote indicates, to me, the marketing hype is accurate.

[jbinbi]

Thanks for the real world input phantom. I would think that with even with a single solar panel (say 150W) if you were away from the boat for 3 days (assuming 3 sunny days) you would get back to 100%.

BTW, saw the pics of your boat. Looks beautiful!

[phantomracer]

Thank you very much...

I have a small 35w i put on at mu mooring.. if the batteries are near full, and i put the panel out, the charge controller shuts off before getting to 100%

If it is real low, it never gets full, or near it. I have a fuel cell for use in cruising power.. not a lot of real estate for panels on my boat..does what i need it to do.

Im not shy about pushing the batteries low..i near flattened them last year when i made a mistake programming the fuel cell, and the fuel cell never came on! The batteries bounced back. Maybe that has contributed to the slight performance hit i noticed. There is a thread on this site about that event!

[smac999]

here is a bad c5 test from six group 31 fireflys this week. ~2 years old.

amp draw is a bit high (140 instead of 115) and shut off a bit early. (didn't get down to 10.5) but closest I could get from inverter and heater. But AH speaks for itself. about 200 out of the 600ah bank

amps from each battery was similar during whole test. (no single weak battery appeared)

lots of good firefly banks out there. not sure what happened to this one. mostly at dock plugged in.

[Britishsea]

Smac999,

I had a similar experience with a 2 battery bank of G31 Fireflies. Capacity dropped in half after 2 years use. Boat mostly at dock and charged exactly per recommendations including sparing float time over the winter months.

Took me a while to figure out what was wrong. Turns out one of the batteries had failed. It would read 12.7V but had a capacity of about 7amp hours. The other battery also had substantial capacity loss but I suspect it was because it was being improperly charged while in parallel with the bad battery.

I replaced the bad battery and did some very aggressive restoration charges with the capacity diminished battery and managed to bring the bank back. It's been fine now all Summer.

My point is - perhaps consider taking the bank apart and testing the G31s individually. You may have a bad one (or two). A healthy firefly should (i believe) be about 13v when fully charged.

[saratogamanta]

DO NOT I REPEAT DO NOT BUY THESE BATTERIES. I have yet to meet a fellow cruiser that has not had cell failures. We are ‘just” out of warranty with a bank of 6 for 900 Amps of the big 4v. After year 1 good and thought they would be better and started checking. Verify with Ocean planet that charging parameters are correct, yes let another year go by and we have 2 dead ones, 2 in a failing condition, 1 good and one slightly better but not great. Got 8 years out of AGMs.

I cannot bring myself to go down this rabbit hole again with their proration and lack of QC in India. I feel bad for Ocean planet who is the US distributor caught in the middle. They are good people trying to make things right regardless of the mfg poor response.

GOOD NEWS: since a couple years ago , lithium has gotten safe simple and far less expensive. I have yet to meet a cruiser that would EVER go back after having had lithium.

[phantomracer]

Originally Posted by saratogamanta

DO NOT I REPEAT DO NOT BUY THESE BATTERIES. I have yet to meet a fellow cruiser that has not had cell failures. We are ‘just” out of warranty with a bank of 6 for 900 Amps of the big 4v. After year 1 good and thought they would be better and started checking. Verify with Ocean planet that charging parameters are correct, yes let another year go by and we have 2 dead ones, 2 in a failing condition, 1 good and one slightly better but not great. Got 8 years out of AGMs.

I cannot bring myself to go down this rabbit hole again with their proration and lack of QC in India. I feel bad for Ocean planet who is the US distributor caught in the middle. They are good people trying to make things right regardless of the mfg poor response.

GOOD NEWS: since a couple years ago , lithium has gotten safe simple and far less expensive. I have yet to meet a cruiser that would EVER go back after having had lithium.

Guess you haven't seen my replies in this post.

[phantomracer]

Also check out this thread https://www.cruisersforum.com/forums...-258811-3.html

and my 6 year update / refresh / results here: https://www.cruisersforum.com/forums...on-260035.html

[admiralslater]

We have just returned to our boat after 20 months due to you know what . The 5 type 31 FF batteries showed about 12.5 volts when I got there. I did a restoration charger the as well as I could with what was available. Drawing the batteries down is the hard part . I have a 60 amp sterling charger so I made 2 pairs and a single . Credit to the charger it ran at full capacity for hours with no issues. After all batteries where about the same I hooked the bank back up and gave it a long charge.
The result is that I am using I am using my normal 10/15% of capacity overnight and charging back to 100 %about mid day .
Two days ago we did laundry with water heated by the machine , made water for 6 hours ,had toast for breakfast . This is ontop of our 3 refrigeration units , and our solar setup was in float by 4.30 . I think these are excellent batteries so far.
Before you ask we have 900 watts of solar on 3 victron controllers .
We are also in the Grenadines

[akopac]

Originally Posted by cha0s

I killed mine (one of the two) after 2 months. Charging with solar and discharging below 50%. (Normally 75%). Have now installed 6 large agms and so far they are running much better 7 months on.

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