RV Batteries: Upgrade To Lithium? What Every RV Owner Needs To Know

From what my Solar installer told me, when connecting a new(out of the box) Inverter, you should power it up for the first time with a Agm or lead acid to prevent an instant failure due to in rush overload. He's had brand new 3000 watt Pro-sine inverters and other top of the line large inverters instantly short out and have to be replaced. Hooking up a car battery on any new inverter till the internal capacitors are charged sounds like a reasonable precaution. The lithium batteries have a huge kick potential, so carefulling is advised.

Excellent video! I am sold on this conversion.

the expert lost his credibility when he said 'amps per hour'. There is no such thing.

From my understanding, you would have two separate busbars, one for negative and one for positive on the parallel run.

Should drive with your fridge running. Many videos support that. You'll ruin your fridge prematurely.

heck even the avg small car must have two 12V lead acid battery's. just to handle all the needs of all the computers.

Perhaps I am missing something, but batteries wired in parallel, (daisy chained), with the PROPER gauge jumpers, are no different than using a buss bar to connect batteries. Each battery is at the exact same point electrically, so all batteries will share the exact same load. The total load current does NOT go through each battery in the chain. So long as the jumpers that parallel the batteries are large enough to easily handle the load, there will be NO voltage drop between batteries, so the order in which they are connected and the location of the voltage supply and load connection will not matter.

enduro 200a/h what size is bms? 100 amps ? u should explain why u would uses 2 x100a/h batteries compared to 1 x200 a/h

I wish you were my camper salesman. I feel like I know more than my guy selling my camper especially with my wifi and solar

Li batts also generally weigh ''a lot'' less than LA ones.

Love your videos. I have watched to batter upgrade videos several times and can't seem to find the answer to something so simple. I just upgraded to Lithium in my new TT. I just received my Victron Smart Shunt in the mail. My question is.......where does the negitive ground wire connect to that is attached to the side of the trailer tongue? Does it go back on the battery or to the shunt?? Looking forward to another video and and answer to my nagging question. Thank you.

What in a lithium battery system negative doesn’t go to the ground? And so the shunt 1 side to ground the other to the the negative post

Used to own a 36’ 5th wheel. Hated it! Now every 5er going down the road looks like a hermit crab with an oversized shell. On topic, my calculations on the last 2 twelve volt fridges consumed around 55 amp hours. One was an Everchill and the other a Dometic. Both can freeze ice cream hard as a rock. With LiFe prices going down so much Lead acid hardly makes sense in the short time horizon and is pointless long term. AGM is actually more expensive than Lithium. If the manufacturers would wire RV’s for them the conversion cost would be minor (charge controller, converter, inverter, dc-dc controller between the alternator and the Lithium batteries.)

I am not buying what you're selling as far as battery configuration. The battery's have wires inside them too and BMS's you can't tell me a 6 gauge over say 12 inches wire has more resistance than the internal battery wires that are much smaller. not to mention the BMS.

As an long time RV'er, I hope to see a concise, no hype, video on what to buy for a typical DIY, cost-effective, NON-SOLAR, Class C RV conversion to Lithium power, including Lithium converter/charger, lithium battery voltage monitoring , battery heating, and other special devices needed. I use a "Trikle Start" (sp) device and home AC power to keep house batteries charged/healthy/ready for use.

Unfortunately the wiring on the Rubicon is just crazy. Inverter positive and negative going to one battery. 12 v fridge is coming off the second battery. Does not allow for battery balancing or monitoring

Heard you recommend the camco box for lithium to be stored on the tongue of a travel trailer. Do you have to worry about moisture with these boxes? This placement is where we will need to go with our batteries.

My 12v fridge with freezer off at sundown bat is 13.40 and 13.25 at 9am.Only getting 3 hours of sun per day where in at.

If boondocking is on your list, then mistake number 1 is getting a trailer with a residential style fridge. The two way absorption fridge in propane mode uses a tiny fraction of the power needed to run a residential style fridge and sips propane. Its like 8-10W per hour and a pound a day vs 150-300W per hour for a residential style fridge (accounting for defrost mode). Also realize that for your fridge to consume 300W, you must collect, store and transform a heck of a lot more than that. You lose at the panels, you lose at the solar charger, you lose at the AC charger, you lose at the alternator charger, you lose at the batteries, you lose at the inverter. Everything else blue shirt guy said is sketchy at best. Cleary, he is just a salesman.

Doesn't the trailer batteries not charge off the tow vehicle? If not, why not? A DC-DC charger isn't that expensive and they have solar control provisions too. A folding panel/solar blanket would be a good idea for expanding your system as you can move them into more direct sunlight and work around shade/tree coverage/direction.

SO WHEN YOU GET INTO THESE REALLY BIGGER LITHIUM BATTERIES LIKE THIS THE 300 YOU'RE SHOWING AT THE END I SEE A PROBLEM THAT BATTERY INTERNALLY THE MIDDLE OF IT IS NOT GETTING THE SAME AMOUNT OF WHEREAS THEY'RE THE POSITIVE AND ENDS OF THE BATTERY SO INTERNALLY IT IS NOT WEARING AS BALANCE AS THREE 100 AMP BATTERIES CONNECTED TO A BUSS BAR
DAVID GRENIS BOULDER CO

God help anyone who gets near one of his arms while he's talking and flailing

But I have a Renorgy DC to DC charger that works off alternator so when you are driving and it charges pretty fast.

I was always told with a 5th wheel you need 6 Battleborn and that’s is for people that bondock but with normal campers that stay in parks 3 would be good and at 1K a piece you can always add more. And I have a Bigfoot truck camper and it will run Ac for anywhere 5-6 hrs.

I just wanted to drop a comment letting you know we enjoyed the video and watching your channel. Thanks.

Better to have 2 - 100 a/h batteries then 1 - 200 a/h battery. With 2, if one fails you still have power while you replace the other one. Not true if the 200 a/h battery fails. And they can fail.

Please warn new users of lithium batteries to NEVER charge them at or below 32 degrees!! It will destroy a lithium battery, but is fine for lead acid batteries.

My question is would you put a lithium battery in your RV with all the EV fires that burn hotter that most fires and with that in mind is your RV insurance higher or out of site when you have lithium batteries installed?

A battery monitor is almost mandatory with a lithium battery. They don't cost all that much either and the convenience/awareness they provide make them a no-brainer. I put a 200 Ah LFP battery in my Class A a few years ago. It cost me $1000 (Chins when they first came out). After our first boondocking trip, running it dead over night, I realized that I needed a shunt to monitor the capacity. You just can't rely on the voltage to give you a reliable estimate of remaining capacity. With the monitor display right by my door, I can now make informed decisions on when to run the generator. I typically let it go down to 20-30% and bring it up to 80% with a 70amp inverter charger. With the prices lower now, I would get a 300AH minimum but I don't regret the decision at all. I run the fridge on gas but have an inverter running the whole coach which has about an 80w idle load.

My friend has a 2019 Fleetwood class A and his converter will auto-sense the battery type so a lithium upgrade will be a breeze for him. He will need to add a shunt, in my opinion.

Imagine sleeping on top of these lithium batteries. Reinventing a nightmare.

Funny he didn't mention the price for the 300ah battery. Maybe because it could be as much as $1000.00.

It always makes me cringe when someone says “amps per hour” I know it’s minor, and I still understand what he means, but credibility as an “expert” really goes down hill when you don’t use the language of your trade properly.

All u do on traveling stops 》 charging charging 😅 😅 cleaning up solarpanels bcz ppl will use their gadget drone to figure how clean ur solar panels trully are 😅. , and at rv resorts u still worries about ur cummins generator + pr😅pane tanks. I think RV resorts have lowvoltage electrical povver source
Everything wasted excercises are not came frm GOD. See ya (alfa gold)

amps per hour is totally meaningless. the important number for power consumption is watthours per hour. a fridge will use the same watts per hour wether its 12 V or 120 V providing the 2 fridges are otherwise identical. the 120 V fridge will use a tenth of the amperage.
a single 100 Ah battery holds about 1200 watthours of power. run all of that through an inverter and you will get 10 Ah at 120 volts minus the losses in the inverter

A lot said but SO MUCH left out! Charging lithium batteries is WAY different and YES a special charger is needed! There's a lot to learn so KEEP LEARNING!

Thanks Tom great video!
I’m saving this for reference when I’m more ready to upgrade 👍🏼🍺

Good info.

Great Information!!! Thanks!!!

I know that you have advertised for Brooklyn bedding in the past. FYI
they won't / don't honor letters or prescriptions from Dr.'s to take care of the taxes.
That would be worth mentioning in your ads.

I just did a very short video on 12v floor cooler vs compact 120v upright. Power consumption was a wash. The big pro for the upright over the floor cooler was its 3 times the storage, you get an actual freezer, it’s cost less, has a smaller floor footprint and it weighed less (in my example).
Thinking not inverting power is more efficient (conversion loss) is really kinda silly. Watts are watts.

Lithium battery fires

Thanks so much! We upgraded to lithium but I didn’t realize it still shows 13.6 even when it’s 40%. We killed our lithiums overnight because we thought we had enough!!! Now I know why!

After doing my due diligence, I determined that I needed a lot more battery and solar than I had first estimated! I ended up with a 2kw solar panel setup, with 1000aH of LifePO4 batteries to get what my small (25 foot TT) needed for boondocking power. I even have a still to turn gray water into fresh water, which extends my boondocking time tremendously. So as soon as I'm done with the cancer regimen, we will be out of here! Cheers from the Boondocking Brewer™!