Feedback on Victron's lead carbon battery

[rsimon]

I've searched the threads have seen only brief (but very good) discussion on the topic of lead-carbon batteries, but what about Victron's lead carbon battery. Is the technology on par with the FireFly? On the topic of FireFly batteries: whether it be from high demand or supply chain issues, it appears as though it is difficult to source the FireFly battery nowadays. It looks like Victron is filling the gap, but does Victron use the same technology as the FireFly? Does "lead-carbon" equate to "Microcell-carbon-foam"? Is there real-life experience with the Victron lead-carbon?

[ItDepends]

I do not know if the Victron "carbon" batteries use the same technology as the Firefly. I assume if you asked them they would answer if they licensed the Caterpillar patent. Victron's claims are quite a bit more modest.

Firefly's supply problem is more than supply chain I am afraid. It looks like all of the US distributers in the marine market have dropped them. I strongly suspect that the distributers became fed up with quality control issues out of the factory in India.

We have a 24V bank of 8 G31 Firefly batteries, and it is everything the advertising copy says it should be, BUT... it took several iterations and warrantee claims before we were able to put together 8 batteries that all worked. I strongly suspect that between the technical service and replacement product nobody made any money on our installation.

It's a shame, when they work they are a great cost effective alternative to Li, but the "infant mortality" of the product we experienced was a real problem. I do not know if the issues are just poor QC or it the problem is inherent to the technology. I would not expect problems from a similar product from Victron.

[Peeew]

I seem to have been a lucky one. I have 5 G31 firefly batteries that all are working well. So far mainly for 6 years of six month trips on the hook. I was sorry to see the failure of the company after the move to different manufacturers with all the failures. But if well built, I am very impressed with Carbon Foam Batteries. Thinking ahead to eventual replacement I’m hoping Victron has more success with their Carbon batteries as they get feedback from users. Hoping to see more info as time goes on. But given what happened to Firefly I’m sure many are hesitant to try these.