https://itechworld.com.au Discount code: VERNON5
New Lithium power getting installed today. iTech, a family owned company from Perth sent me a couple of 200amp lithium batteries and one of their dc-dc chargers and together with Albert, a local sparky we got the job done. My old AGM batteries had been slowly getting worse and we'd had to really keep an eye on power usage so these new batteries came at the right time. The installation took only a few hours and everything worked out first time. After a few weeks now all I can say is Mega! We've just had 6 days in a row with rain, grey skies and cold temps, almost no solar charge coming in and we still had 37% left! Pretty awesome and now we really dont even need to keep an eye on our power usage.
A big thanks to iTECH.
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Transcript:
G'day guys. Welcome to another video, as you can probably realize i'm here in the
marina, breakwater marina. I splashed the boat yesterday, before yesterday. After all the painting
was all finished I spent the whole day yesterday cleaning, it's all full of fiberglass dust, terrible
terrible stuff and uh itchy and not nice to be in the boat when it's like that but yeah
spent about eight hours cleaning yesterday and the boat's looking great she's looking
real good i'm proud of her again and today we're doing another big upgrade and it'll be the last
sort of upgrade for right now the last major upgrade anyway and it's going to change our life
on the boat i'm pretty stoked about it i've told you in the last year or so a few times probably
that i'm having battery issues and you know my agm's are starting to wear down on that so
yeah this cool company from western australia itech world has come to the rescue and shipped me
out some new batteries and some new gear installed so today's that day this is what we're looking at
and i've got some help because i am not an electrician and i'm terrible at this sort of stuff
so how are you going what's your name introduce yourself hi i'm albert uh local electrician here
in townsville we're just getting ready to start the job with vern here so the main thing is we're
just gonna isolate take these old lumps so they can go to the scrap metal yard um work out what
we've got with the cabling we're probably gonna have to upgrade the cabling but the main thing
is once we get the batteries out see what we've got work from there get these new lovely lithiums
in and hopefully you'll be done this afternoon so as luck would have it i met albert in the chandra
over at the yard what i found here in townsville it's very very hard to get anybody to do anything
let alone work you know i needed some clears done oh three months i needed this finished oh don't
even bother asking there's no one available it's all blah blah blah there's either no one working
here or everyone's too lazy i don't know what it is but i met albert in the chandlery and um
heard him talking to them there's an electrician and i was like i need one of them
so i grabbed him and said do you want to you know have you got time to come and look at my boat and
the system right now yeah i've got 15 minutes and that was two days ago and here he is working today
so this is a turn up for the books and it's re-established my faith in north queensland
that people actually work so what i've done first is pull out all the old batteries as i said i've
got a bit of a hodgepodge i've got one 200 amp hour battery and three 120s or four 120s ahead in
it's a bit of a hodgepodge and uh all right so i've got the batteries out now the old ones
and just to show you the comparison it's pretty crazy we both lifted this 200 amp hour one out
and uh 60 something kilos and it's just crazy i'll show you the size difference so these are the old
ones these are 120 npr batteries so that's 60 amp hours of usable power this is a 245
and a very high cca a very good battery this one and it's day when i got it
um but yeah very very heavy i can barely lift it and then over here you've got
you got 200 amperes which is you've nearly got 200 amp hours
which is basically the same as all that but this is just so much more usable power and it's
i can lift it easy by myself okay so we're pulling all these cables out um because there's more power
on these batteries we need thicker cables so this is the cable that's coming in now
i'll show you a comparison in a minute but pulling all this cable out that's pretty
expensive this is um you know this is already quite thick copper cable yeah you can see here
this is pretty thick solid copper and the one albert's bringing in here is what's this one
uh i think 40 50 50. all right yeah so going a bit bigger so basically as long as under five meters
as a general rule you work on three times the cable size for your current capacity of the cable
these are the ones i botched up in indonesia and look at the size of them compared to
what this is going to be look they don't you could feel them hot like because the
obviously they were restricting the charge but this is like using what you've got yeah
yeah this is um uh welding cable from indonesia yeah no all the thing is i said like it's a good
it's a fairly good quality flex cable it's really really good i said i'll just do it a little bit
different to this so this is the space where one of them is going and this is my main sort of bus
bar and and uh circuit breakers and fuses these are all fuses here and this is the um what do
you call this the shot this is the shunt which uh tells this thing here how much battery percentage
well basically how much power is going in and out how much usage is the good thing
about this boat it's very easy to work on because there's no build you know all
the cables just go straight here under the thing very easy to get to so that's pretty
nice that'll go through that should go through yeah so we should be good get the hammer on it
so we've got these really thick cables we're putting in much thicker cables than i had before
because the capacity is obviously more but getting them through this run here is quite tricky i've
had to cut out a bit of a section here to get them up and then they've got to go through through here
three of them so we're yeah taping them together and pulling them through getting one through
and pulling the next and pulling the next all right so we've got the big fat 70 mil
copper cables through under the floor from the one battery box to the other
and albert's putting the lugs on that end and we'll drop that battery and then
the same here and then we'll connect it all up albert's what's elbowed up to
he's shrinking the ends and the lugs on
okay so albert's finished on this side with the lugs
as you can see we've got the big lugs all nicely down and
these are little dyneema ropes and they're obviously important
to tie the battery down let's say worst case i'm going around the south end of new zealand
and get rolled over which obviously i don't want to happen but you know you got to be prepared
these batteries are then going to be well less of a problem they're not 60 kilos but they're still
24 of 25 kilos that will if they're not tied down fly to there and potentially go through the roof
or land fall back down and land on your head and kill you so all these sorts of things you need
to think about like the floorboards need to be able to be either screwed down or in this case
i've got i've got locks on them and the batteries need to be tied down if you get yeah if you get
inverted on your boat they are gonna gravity is gonna take him to the top all right i'm gonna um
get this battery and it's gonna be a lot easier getting this battery in than getting the agm's in
because they're a third of the weight all right let's go get it so we got 13.33 volts on that
that's better here we've got mate that's identical 13.33 so is that a good sign well it means they've
held charged it means they're ready to go you don't need don't need prior balancing nothing yeah
so for 24 volt system you always balance your batteries beforehand 12 volts critical
because they'll they'll balance out being tied together but that's yeah that's really good
maybe still no you just swing a couple ease over my shoulder look at that
oh it's like nothing the other one i literally couldn't do this by myself
it's so crazy it's really nothing in it but there's double the power
all right look at that it just fits in beautifully and i have the terminals coming up here
boom boom tie these over a bit of an update where we're up to now what are we doing there's a bit
of a mess of wires coming here so i'm just taking the battery wires are going to be here then we're
bleeding off there and just put a little bus bar in here so that way we had daisy chaining it all
off off the bottom of this fuse here so we had that daisy chained off with that which was a bit
messy and a bit not good to go from that to that to that in terms of cable sizing so by going to a
bus bar it also means that some other cable will tag off a lot easier a lot cleaner so i'm hoping
once we do this we can get power back on make sure make sure everything's good with the batteries
then test the dc dc and after install the dc dc we should be your hopefully good
so just doing some final testing before we do the final hookups so if you look over there
that battery's all hooked up so we've got our positive uh parallel feed to here we've got our
negative main feed there and we've got a net negative parallel feed over there
the main feed from that battery comes to here for the negative the positive on that side comes
to here so i can show you that with this there you go 13.3 volts battery one and battery two
and then by doing this it's forcing the current to be shared equally through both batteries so
instead of basically where a lot of people do it they'll go positive to here negative to here then
they'll parallel off this to the other battery that's how it was before yeah which is very very
bad that's extremely bad and it's even worse with lithium because what actually happens is
is this battery will will be effectively if uh zero resistance to the bus to this to the loads
and then that there will be the resistance of that lead there which would be like comparison of zero
to infinity so to counteract that by crossing the positive to this one and then making the feed go
back from the other side across it means that that the current flow has to flow through
both batteries and it loads both batteries correctly yeah evenly yeah yeah so when we
initially wired this like uh you you questioned it why are we putting three wires across yeah so
the parallel positive parallel negative and our main neutral feedback across the boat so they
should age at the same rate and you're using full capacity of both yes that's exactly right yeah no
it also means too that you'll pull the batteries down evenly yeah and you won't have because what
else happens with that with these is if you pull an overload and this batteries get hammered down
unevenly to that one this bms will go no no no no it'll turn off and another battery will turn on so
the bms's will basically be doing their own things instead of they should be pulling down together
like that that's what you want with all uh lithium batteries that the bit the bms is
at doing their own thing separately because of because of an installation fault effectively
okay and most problems you have is not it's not manufacturing it's installation yeah so you guys
yeah yeah or or when i do it so how far if we are pairing this boat up again
so basically put that on there we can then start testing it when you've got to
start commissioning stuff all right we have electricity baby now listen to that fridge
starts right up should i have turned all that stuff off no it doesn't really matter too much
so what's this where is this it ah i always do it just just to make sure it's just a bit
of a wax coating it just stops so you don't get any corrosion it seals the joints off too so we
don't get any um oxidation between the between the battery and the lugs okay state of players
the boat is running again we're powered up but just off battery power now so the front section
of it's done all this is done here the fridge is running the solar would potentially be charging
right it will be yes it's all clipped it should be charging it's all connected in the next job is to
put the dc to dc charger in that'll go between the start battery which is an agm and this slot
right to stop the alternate overheating because the lithium battery is effectively a dead short
they'll pull whatever current you can give them that's why you have a dc dc because it limits it
otherwise it'd be just maxing out the alternator and burning it out
yeah um especially if you're an alternator when you're trolling at low speeds
because the problem is is that although he's trying to put out if it tries to peg out to
its maximum output and it isn't turning fast enough to get cool air through it you'll burn out
but if you were under a bit of revs and the fan is spinning fast that's probably okay
especially with this okay is a relative term yeah so if you've got like a 55 amp alternator
and that's tied the start battery to your house batteries and your house battery wants 200 amps
it will basically peg out to maximum it probably won't burn it out it'll just go as high as it
can but what will happen is it'll flatten your start battery oh yeah so so you'll have a deficit
of what goes in what equal what comes out and you'll end up with with a flat start battery okay
so it's a little buff right you don't really want that yeah but yeah
that's what you don't want so this dc dc is what you really need if you're charging up lithiums
all right so we've got the 40 amp dc to tc charger plugged in here yeah so alternator in
to our to our battery isolators and then so we've got it that's bridging between the the combiner so
when the engine's running it will automatically charge the lithium house batteries and um just
put some extra fusing in there and we've got it so that when it runs it's charging when it's off
it cuts off yeah and so you've got the three the three plugs there start battery output battery
and solar which we're not using yet that's another mppt is built into this yeah so i can plug solar
directly in and so we've got the two isolation switches here um that's still functional and i
still use them in the same way start battery yep so start battery and then that's the combiners
good turn it on check check the settings all right do that and then test our output yeah
so it's
all right so we'll just run the engine for the first time to check what the
dc dc charge is going in it yeah
so that's 20 amps going into the battery right now but we've got load
on the battery with 10 amps coming out so it's literally 30 going in all right
all right excellent testing done
all right well good job stoked on uh how it all turned out and um yeah thanks for that that you
could just come down here really that short notice and just bang this out it's awesome yeah no it's
no problem it wasn't too bad a job um and you think i'll be pretty pretty sweet now with power
i'd be very surprised if you have a power problem forever with this boat the amount of loads you
pull you've got fairly fairly reasonably small size loads and these batteries like i really
think once you start getting into it you'll realize these batteries without any solar input or
alternator input are going to just last and then when you keep the alternator in it's it's going to
basically pump the current straight back into it yeah like you're pretty much self-sufficient
now yeah you don't never you probably never need to hook up your power that's awesome
that's how i like to live so well that's that's the way a lot of people are looking for to be
you know that's self-efficacy off-grid yeah yeah this is definitely an off-grid
but um that power cable you can almost literally throw that in the bin now it's already unplugged
yeah that's right like you know and this is what this is the holy grail to do with the caravan
boats the whole lot all right well thanks very much for your hard work it's freezing here we are
down in ellie beach it's about three weeks since i installed these batteries with albert awesome
albert from townsville and man we have put these things to the test it has literally been like this
sub-antarctic weather for about six days in a row now haven't seen the sun zero solar hardly
and you know what i haven't had to turn on the engine we don't have a generator
and these batteries have just been powering through so six days now no energy coming
in basically we've still got fridge and freezer we're actually inside using our
computers more than normal because obviously you're not going to do much in this weather
and it's sort of going down 10 per day and we've still probably got another three days worth in the
batteries so that's incredible we've never come close to that with the agm's i think we would be
about three days on agm's before and so they've really blown me away um yeah so good listening
to all these boats around us generator going engine going just all chugging away diesel and
we're just sitting here quiet with our lithiums just doing their thing so yeah itech thanks very
much you've definitely changed our lives i'll do a bit more of an update in six months because
you know we'll live with them more but this has been the biggest test and i mean obviously didn't
plan this who would plan to be in sunny queensland and be five degrees at night and raining every day
yeah i want to say thanks to to itech obviously this is a huge help for us a really really big
upgrade to shahalian our lives aboard we obviously have just proved it we can go completely off grid
now i'm sure in new zealand where it's obviously not as sunny as is in queensland we'll still be
fine there as well all right guys i want to give a plug here to itech right here website from itech
right here a code you guys can grab to get a bit of a discount on on their products look
through their website um their gear they've got all sorts of stuff for for off-grid living solar
panels i can't i'm not even going to go through it they've got a lot of stuff go and check it
out use the code um yeah save some money and and it's australian designed family business they've
got longer guarantees than most other brands they ship out i had these things in 10 days and
that was all the way from western australia and it's not airmail you know the lithium battery so
had the stuff real quick customer service is great the actual humans answering the phones
i can really highly recommend them really top top blokes for any of you guys that are
sailing up to townsville and you need anything with your electric electronics done albert's the
man he is really gonna come quickly his prices are more than reasonable and he's a cool bloke to hang
out with you know along with all that so here's his contacts right down here top bloke thanks for
watching guys hope this was in some way useful to you and uh we'll see you next week bye bye
so
me
you
Uploaded by:
Vernon Deck
•
Category:
Boat Building/Maintenance/Repair, Instructional
•
Added on
10 July 2022
•
Location:
Rosshaven, Townville, Australia
Description
https://itechworld.com.au Discount code: VERNON5
New Lithium power getting installed today. iTech, a family owned company from Perth sent me a couple of 200amp lithium batteries and one of their dc-dc chargers and together with Albert, a local sparky we got the job done. My old AGM...
New Lithium power getting installed today. iTech, a family owned company from Perth sent me a couple of 200amp lithium batteries and one of their dc-dc chargers and together with Albert, a local sparky we got the job done. My old AGM...