DEEP CYCLE BATTERY COMPARISON - Is Lithium really worth it?

Summary

Thinking about whether to invest in a lithium battery or stick to an AGM for your 12-volt system? This video delves into the differences between lithium and AGM deep cycle batteries. It tests the pros and cons of each type to help you make a sound decision for your needs. The discussion covers lifespan, cost, weight, and the ability to power heavy-duty appliances, highlighting lithium batteries as a revolutionary choice over time. Despite the initial higher cost, lithium stands out for its performance, weight efficiency, and longevity, especially for those planning extensive use of their vehicles.

Highlights

• Lithium batteries offer significant weight savings over AGM batteries. 🏋️‍♂️
• AGM batteries are reliable but heavier and less efficient. 🚙
• For high power needs, lithium is superior with more usable amp hours. ⚡
• Lithium batteries can be a better investment over time despite higher initial cost. 💰
• The right battery choice depends on your vehicle use and budget. 🌲

Key Takeaways

• Lithium batteries are lighter and more efficient than AGM batteries! 🏋️‍♂️
• AGMs are cheaper initially but may end up costing more in the long run. 💰
• Lithiums can power heavy-duty appliances better than AGMs. ⚡
• For extensive vehicle use, lithium batteries may be worth the investment. 🚗
• Think long-term: With lithium, you'll save on weight, space, and money! 🌟

Overview

Deep cycle batteries are essential for 12-volt systems commonly used in four-wheel drives. With lithium batteries gaining popularity, it's important to understand their advantages over traditional AGM batteries. This video guide takes you through the pros, like weight and efficiency, and cons, like cost, helping you decide what's best for your needs.

AGM batteries have been the staple for many due to their reliability and affordability. However, they come with limitations such as weight and reduced usable amp hours. Comparatively, lithium batteries, though more expensive, offer greater efficiency with nearly 100% use of their amp hours and a significantly longer life span, making them ideal for avid adventurers.

Deciding on a battery involves considering cost, lifespan, and practical needs. Lithium batteries, despite their upfront cost, offer long-term savings with fewer replacements needed. For those planning extensive, long-term use with heavy-duty appliances, lithium proves to be a wise investment. The key takeaway is to align battery choice with personal usage, vehicle longevity, and budget.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 00:30: Introduction to Battery Comparison The chapter titled 'Introduction to Battery Comparison' addresses the question of whether to invest in a lithium battery or stick with an AGM battery for a 12-volt system. It introduces a comparison between lithium and AGM deep cycle batteries by putting them through a series of tests. The aim is to assist in making the right decision for a 12-volt setup. The chapter highlights the growing popularity of lithium batteries, especially among football drivers, and outlines the benefits they offer over traditional lead-acid batteries while questioning their suitability and justification for individual needs.
• 00:30 - 01:00: Exploring Battery Types and Setups In this chapter, the focus is on the comparison between lithium batteries and lead-acid batteries, specifically AGM (Absorbent Glass Mat) batteries, which are common in four-wheel drive applications. The discussion covers the advantages and disadvantages of each type of battery, helping users determine which suits their needs better. Additionally, the chapter includes an exploration of various 12-volt battery setups available in the market, ranging from portable solutions to those integrated into four-wheel drives.
• 01:00 - 03:00: Advantages and Disadvantages of AGM Batteries AGM batteries are widely used due to their proven reliability, good pricing, and availability in various sizes and shapes to suit different applications. They are sealed, allowing safe mounting inside vehicles and in various orientations. However, a significant disadvantage is their weight, with a 105 amp hour AGM battery weighing around 28.4 to 30 kilograms.
• 03:00 - 05:00: Recommended Usage and Maintenance of AGM Batteries This chapter discusses the weight and capacity of AGM batteries used in four-wheel-drive vehicles. The weight is attributed to the lead plates and electrolyte-filled fiberglass, while the usable amp hours (around 50-60 out of a possible 105) are highlighted as crucial to avoid over-discharging and potential damage.
• 05:00 - 08:00: Testing and Comparison of AGM and Lithium Batteries This chapter discusses the internals of batteries, focusing on the importance of voltage levels and how they affect battery health. It explains that accessories like fridges turn off when the battery is low to prevent damage. A fully charged battery typically outputs 12.8 to 13 volts. A rough guide is provided: when the battery reads about 12 volts, it is approximately 50% discharged and needs charging to avoid damage.
• 08:00 - 12:00: Pros and Cons of Lithium Batteries The chapter titled 'Pros and Cons of Lithium Batteries' discusses the disadvantages of AGM batteries compared to lithium batteries. It explains that discharging an AGM battery beyond 50% shortens its lifespan, and once a battery is discharged to around 10 volts, it is considered dead and will not perform as well even after recharging. This can lead to inconveniences, such as electrical appliances losing power, like a fridge shutting off and food spoiling, especially when camping.
• 12:00 - 15:00: Long-term Investment and Cost Analysis The chapter explores the impact of usage patterns on the lifespan of AGM batteries. It explains this concept using an analogy of stepping and jumping from increasing heights to illustrate how greater discharge depths can reduce battery life. Small discharges are manageable and leave the battery's life mostly preserved, akin to stepping down from a low step without tiring quickly. However, larger discharges equate to higher 'jumps' that wear out the battery much like a more demanding physical activity would tire someone out more quickly.
• 15:00 - 18:00: Understanding Lithium Battery Setup and Configuration The chapter discusses the setup and configuration of lithium batteries, comparing them to AGM batteries, particularly in terms of lifespan and charging requirements. It highlights how discharging AGM batteries significantly reduces their lifespan, whereas lithium batteries offer more durability. The narrator mentions the physical challenges involved in accessing the battery setup, such as climbing onto the roof of a vehicle, indicating the practical considerations in battery maintenance.
• 18:00 - 23:00: Portable vs. Permanent Battery Setups In this chapter titled 'Portable vs. Permanent Battery Setups,' the focus is on the longevity and efficiency of AGM batteries. It explains that a battery can go through 300 complete discharge cycles before reaching the end of its life. However, if the battery is only discharged by 50%, it can last for about 900 cycles. The speaker shares personal experience, noting that with proper care, an AGM battery can last approximately three years. To maximize the battery's lifespan, it should not be discharged completely.
• 23:00 - 25:00: Conclusion and Recommendations The Conclusion and Recommendations chapter explains the science behind battery charging and discharging. It emphasizes the importance of keeping the battery charge topped up to prevent the formation of sulfates, which inhibit the battery's ability to fully recharge. Charging at deeper discharges results in more sulfates forming, which require more voltage to remove. Hence, it is recommended to recharge the battery immediately to prevent these issues.

DEEP CYCLE BATTERY COMPARISON - Is Lithium really worth it? Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 should you invest in a lithium battery or just stick with an agm for your 12 volt system today we're going to answer this question by getting a lithium energm deep cycle battery and putting them through a series of tests to help you make the right decision for your 12-volt setup lithium batteries are fast becoming really popular with football drivers out there and for good reason too they offer a stack of benefits over a typical lead acid battery but are they really going to suit your needs and more importantly are they actually justified
• 00:30 - 01:00 with the cost of these things now today we're going to basically explore the differences between lithium batteries and lead acid batteries focusing on agm batteries because that's probably most typical for a full wheel drive sort of application we're going to look at the pros the cons and what is going to suit your needs better plus we're also going to have a look at the different types of 12-volt setups on the market from your real portable ones right through the ones that are inbuilt into 4-wheel drives up by 200 here [Music]
• 01:00 - 01:30 agm batteries like this one right here are still widely used and are widely used for good reason too they're proven to work reliable well priced and you can get them in a range of different shapes and sizes to suit your application they're also sealed so you can mount them inside a vehicle and on their side quite safely there's also a fair few cons when it comes to agm batteries and the first being weight now this one here is 105 amp hour agm battery it weighs 28.4 kilos let's just call it 30 kilos
• 01:30 - 02:00 for easy maths that is a significant amount of weight to have in the back your four-wheel drive and the reason why it weighs so much is because inside this battery there's some really heavy lead plates also an electrolyte filled fiberglass inside so all that combines to make it a very heavy battery the second is the amount of usable amp hours inside the battery so we said this here is 105 amp hour battery of that you probably got 50 or 60 usable amp hours inside this battery before you over discharge it and can actually damage the
• 02:00 - 02:30 internals of this battery if you've ever wondered why accessories like your fridge will turn off when your battery's low it's because it can damage the battery trying to get power from it when it's been drained too much a fully charged battery puts out around 12.8 to 13 volts here's a really simple and rough guide once it reads about 12 volts your battery is probably about 50 percent discharged meaning if it's a regular deep cycle it'll need charging as soon as possible before risking damage once it's reading
• 02:30 - 03:00 around 10 to 10 and a half volts your battery is dead flat and while it'll charge up it'll never be as good as it was new again it's the last thing you want when you're out in the middle of nowhere you pull up to camp and find your fridge is shut off and your food is spoiled the reason why it's not good to discharge your agm battery by more than 50 is because in essence every time you're discharging your agm battery you shorten its life span so the more times that you discharge your battery and by the amount that you discharge it is going to
• 03:00 - 03:30 significantly reduce the amount of life of your agm battery all right here's a little analogy that might help explain the properties of agm batteries a little bit better now you've got this step right here now i could jump up and down from that step about a thousand times before i get tired it's the same with discharging a battery just a little bit so you just charge a little bit um the life of that battery is going to you know stay intact for quite some time now you take a bigger step now i can get up here pretty easy but trust me i'll probably get about half the amount of steps in here before i get absolutely
• 03:30 - 04:00 buggered and the same goes with an agm battery you just charge your battery that much more and of course you're going to get a shorter life out of it then take a bigger step climbing onto the roof of my vehicle well trust me when i say this i'm not going to be able to do that many times before i'm absolutely buggered if you discharge your agm battery by huge amounts well the lifespan is going to be way shorter tell you what these things don't get any lighter now if you're looking about the lifespan of an agm battery according to the specifications by the manufacturer well you get about
• 04:00 - 04:30 300 complete discharges out of this battery before you know the life of the battery is um done now if you say only discharge by 50 well you're going to get about 900 cycles out of the same battery so there's nothing wrong with an agm battery i've used one for years and in my experience i get about three years worth of life out of one of these assuming that i look after it and i don't discharge it all the way so if you've got an agm battery the best way to preserve the amount of life you're going to get out of this sort of battery
• 04:30 - 05:00 is to only basically use a small amount of charge before you reapply that charge and keep it topped up scientifically here's what's happening inside your battery every time you discharge it and recharge it the deeper you discharge your battery the more sulfates form which essentially prevents the chemical process a battery needs to do a full recharge the more sulfates on the plates the more voltage is required to remove them failing to recharge the battery immediately means the sulfates will
• 05:00 - 05:30 harden into crystals permanently damaging the battery insulating the plates and thus reducing the battery's ability to react efficiently here are three tips to help you get a longer life at your agm battery a hard mounted solar panel is a great idea because it'll constantly be topping up that battery so it'll rarely discharge the damaging levels have a good quality dc dc charger that has several charging phases that are made for agm batteries these chargers know exactly how much
• 05:30 - 06:00 voltage at amps to put in and when which will stop sulfate build up and extend the life of your battery fit a voltmeter of any kind to your 12v system so you can properly monitor the discharge of your battery start thinking about how you'll charge it up when it gets to roughly 12.2 to 12.3 volts so you can ensure that it never drops into the 11's [Music] right oh here's a cool little test that's going to show how long you're
• 06:00 - 06:30 going to get out of each of the batteries the agm and the lithium right here now keeping in mind this is 100 amp hour lithium this is actually 105 amp hour agm so this one's actually got technically a higher capacity than this lithium so we've got two 69 liter fridges they're both set up exactly the same way we've got a voltage meter so we actually see the voltage of each both are fully charged as well now as you can see this one reads at 12.89 that's full volts for um fully charged for an agm battery this one here reads at 13.8
• 06:30 - 07:00 again higher voltage but that's what you expect out of the lithium so we're going to turn both the fridges on get them down to zero degrees they've both got 10 liters of water inside each of the fridges and we're just going to see how long they last with an agm you can only discharge it to 50 before you can risk reducing the life of your batteries which means even though they're the same size you get much more usable power out of a lithium the fridge running off the agm showed an error after two and a half days with a voltage reading 11.15
• 07:00 - 07:30 meaning it was over discharged and at the point where it can reduce the life of the battery whereas the fridge connected to the redarc lithium was still running and showing a voltage of 12.9 and continued to run for three more days now you have to keep in mind that does seem like a lot of time but both fridges are in ideal temperature conditions being inside this shed which is insulated we've had pretty moderate temperatures as well and no one has been in and out of these fridges so if this fridge was inside the back of a football drive and you're typically on a camping trip trying to get in and out of that
• 07:30 - 08:00 fridge all the time well you probably expect half again of that sort of performance out of the agm and lithium but even still saying that it's proven that the lithium has got double the life than the agm now when it comes to lithium batteries of course there's pros and cons as well now the pros are the negatives of the agm batteries ia weight and depth of discharge now one of the big advantages of course of lithium is weight now if
• 08:00 - 08:30 that was an agm battery there's no chance i could get that up there one-handed we put them on the scales and an equivalent agm battery weighed 28.5 kilos whereas a lithium only weighed 12 and a half kilos the other cool thing about having a really lightweight battery means you can place them in obscure places in the canopy like i have i've actually mounted my two lithiums up the top here which is a little space that nobody really uses in their canopy it's up and out of the way but you could never ever do that with agm batteries because there'd be 60 kilos up there that's way too heavy now the reason why lithiums are a lot lighter than agm's is
• 08:30 - 09:00 whilst agms are filled with lead and water lithium batteries don't have any lead inside and use an electrolyte substance that is lighter than fiberglass now having less weight doesn't just mean that you can put them in obscure places like this but it also reduces the amount of payload on your four-wheel drive and as for wheel drives you know every single kilo counts this also means your lithium battery will last much longer too because it uses the power much more efficiently you'll get lots more cycles out of a lithium for example discharging a battery like
• 09:00 - 09:30 the redarc 100 amp hour hd lithium to 50 will give you about 5 000 cycles and even down to 20 percent you can get over 2 000 cycles out of the battery compare that to an agm's 900 cycles and you can see how lithium lasts a lot longer another advantage of lithium battery is you can discharge a lithium almost all the way flat and still get a higher voltage out of the lithium so essentially you can use about 100 of the usable amp hours inside this lithium so
• 09:30 - 10:00 this one here has got 100 amp hours you can nearly get 100 amp hours out of lithium now before we also said that it is you know you risk the life of the battery the more you discharge it near flat now this is the case with all batteries but not so much the case with a lithium because of the way that the energy is transferred between the cells another area where lithium trumps the old agm battery is in its ability to run high drawing appliances so say take something like this angle grinder for example now this will draw about say
• 10:00 - 10:30 call it 40 amps when you start it up this agm battery according to the manufacturer specifications can only handle about 30 amps even though it's a 100 amp hour battery now this lithium battery is 100 amps also but it has an output of 100 amps so it'll easily be able to run that grinder and other really thirsty current appliances like a coffee machine and things like that so the main reason why the lithium can do that comes down to the internals of the battery now there's two main things number one it's got a bms inside the
• 10:30 - 11:00 lithium battery so a battery management system and the other way that it can handle high current is because of the way the cells are made up it's a very efficient way of moving that power around and another thing you've got to keep in mind is not all lithium batteries are made equally because a lot of the cheaper lithium batteries won't have an output of a full hundred amp hours they might have a lower rating therefore won't be able to run very thirsty appliances like an angle grinder or a coffee machine or induction cooker all those things that football drivers like to have in the back of their
• 11:00 - 11:30 four-wheel drive so before you choose the right lithium make sure you have a look at the rating this one's got a c-class rating so make sure you have a good look at that and understand how much output the lithium has the higher the c rating the more power thirsty appliances you can run plus it'll charge faster so as the voltage drops on your battery so is the amount of current that the battery provides to a point whereby the voltage will get so low that your accessories will actually start to turn off because your battery can't provide
• 11:30 - 12:00 enough current the problem is as you drain your battery the voltage drops but the current increases to achieve the same power that's needed from your appliances but a lithium battery will actually have higher voltage throughout the whole discharge cycle so if you put that into a practical sense when you say at camp you might have your inverter on with some power hungry appliances well the lithium's going to do a way better job at running those efficiently for a lot longer
• 12:00 - 12:30 one of the downsides of a lithium is the initial cost a typical agm battery will set you back around 300 bucks compare this to a redarc lithium battery which you can pick up for fifteen hundred to nineteen hundred dollars depending on the model but when you do the numbers over the life of the battery you might find that choosing a lithium at the start is much more cost effective than these numbers tell you for instance if you were to get 10 years out of your lithium battery and at best you get roughly 5 years out of an agm
• 12:30 - 13:00 that means to get the same life out of your battery setup as lithium you would have had to have to replace the agm at least once which means you're now at 600 bucks and because we know the usable power of an agm is about 50 it means if you want to get the same usable power that you get out of one lithium you'd need two agm batteries so that means if you're replacing the agm every five years you'd have been through four batteries in comparison to the one lithium battery bringing the price to
• 13:00 - 13:30 twelve hundred dollars this is also if your agm lasts five years as mentioned earlier every time you discharge your battery it loses life and in that 10 years of owning lithium you'll also be able to run more heavy duty appliances you've saved 50 kilos plus you can charge them faster meaning more time out bush there's a fair argument that it's worth investing in lithium in the long run but let's put this in perspective because if you're a young bloke on a real budget you're probably going to need one agm for those weekender trips
• 13:30 - 14:00 and to be honest the agm is probably going to cut it for you but if you plan on owning your vehicle for 10 years you're going to be using your vehicle for exploring remote parts of australia you want to have a fridge you want to have all your lights you want to have maybe things like a coffee machine or an induction cooker or use an angle grinder off the back of it run a big inverter all of those power hundred accessories you can see pretty quickly by owning a lithium battery you're gonna save a lot of weight but also in the long run you're actually gonna save on cost as well
• 14:00 - 14:30 so far we've established that except for cost a lithium is a much better battery than an agm on just about every single point however because it's new technologies a few things you need to understand before you think of chucking one of these in your four-wheel drive firstly lithium batteries have a different charge profile than agms or other batteries what that means is you can't put any old charger on your lithium battery you need to have a charger that's lithium compatible like redarc's range of bc dc
• 14:30 - 15:00 charges when charging a standard agm you can charge at a maximum of 25 amps and discharge at 35 amps but with a redarc lithium heavy duty battery you can charge at 50 amps and discharge at 100 amps meaning if you've got a 50 amp charger you can charge the entire battery from empty in just two hours all lithium batteries have an internal battery management system or bms its job is to protect your battery against excessive discharge and over voltage and
• 15:00 - 15:30 it will essentially shut down the battery if there's an issue you might be thinking i don't want my battery to shut down well it does so to protect the internals of the battery and it's super simple to restart if it does happen so basically you need to understand that your lithium battery is an investment for your four-wheel drive and you need the right charger to make sure you get many years of service out of it so you want to put a 12-volt system in the back of your four-wheel drive but you're still a little bit unsure what sort of setup is gonna cater best to your needs so i think the best way of explaining
• 15:30 - 16:00 this one to you is have a look at a couple of different setups a couple of my vehicles including this one here we'll go through a couple of setups and that way you're probably armed with the right information to make the right decision for your four-wheel drive now let's start with this vehicle here it's got a portable setup one of the cool things about a portable setup is the fact that it requires basically no installation and you can take it in and out of your vehicle you might have a boat you want to have a full 12 volt system on it's very very versatile this unit here is actually something i've been playing with recently it's redarc's go block what's so cool about this it's
• 16:00 - 16:30 got 100 amp hours of lithium in this really small portable and lightweight case so it charges while you're old ladder or via solar just buy a little anderson plug at the back here plus it's got all your sig sockets it's got a charger built in it's got basically everything you need for a very fancy 12 volt system and it just basically you can lift it carry it put in the back your four-wheel drive and it's ready to go camping there's no expensive installs so now i'm in the back of here and i wanted to explain to you from a personal point of view why i decided to upgrade from the two agms that i've
• 16:30 - 17:00 always run in the back of city here to one lithium now just like you guys one of the biggest hurdles stopping me from upgrading to lithium was the initial cost because getting a lithium battery is not a cheap exercise but when you start to work out the pros and cons against agm versus lithium you soon start to realize that over a long term of owning a vehicle like this the lithium is going to more than pay for itself now here's a couple of advantages obviously the fact that once i put a lithium in here i can set and forget for probably a good 10 years if i look after
• 17:00 - 17:30 it compared to the agms which i had two of which i had to replace every three years you can soon see how the agms would actually add up to be more than the price of one of these lithiums because one lithium does the job of two agm's now the other thing of course it went through this in in a lot of detail before was the weight i saved myself about 50 kilos by converting to lithium and the third thing was just the physical space now i used to run an agm into this one and an agm in this one now this is completely free so i run all my
• 17:30 - 18:00 spare parts which was a lot of weight in the back of the drawer now moved into the center of the vehicle it's freed up drawer space and i've got things like cvs i've got alternators all different spare parts in here so i've gained a lot more storage by removing one of the agm batteries and then you've got the setup that's in the back of my 200 series here now this is certainly not a budget option but it does everything you could ever imagine and it's perfectly suited to this vehicle so what you're looking at briefly is you've
• 18:00 - 18:30 got two 100 amp hour lithium batteries by redarc they're charged by a manager 30. i've also got a 2000 watt pure sine wave inverter and everything is controlled via red vision which is really really clever on its own right so i've actually done a video on the full setup of this 200 if you really want to see the details of it but for now all you need to know that it charges at 30 amps into those two 100 amp hour lithium having 200 amp hours of lithium basically means that i can run nearly any 12 volt or even 240
• 18:30 - 19:00 volt appliance that i want to run in the back of a four-wheel drive so think of things like a coffee machine or induction cooker or even an angle grinder on a cord you can run all of those things easily on the back of here and never have to worry about how much battery you've got left in your system so typically i run camp lights around a fridge anything i want in the back of this vehicle i've never had to once worry about if the battery is going to go flat so that's very very impressive now like i said it's not a budget setup but if
• 19:00 - 19:30 you're very serious about your touring you want a system that you can take the luxuries from home with you wherever you go and be off the grid for months at a time this is a setup for you there you go there's a good look at my dream 12 volt set up in the big 200 here but i want to put the question back to you guys what is the best 12 volt system for you is it something portable like the go block or maybe it's something like the big 200 where it's a no expense spared ultimate 12 volt setup anyway let us know in the comments below well there
• 19:30 - 20:00 you go hopefully you've learned a lot about agm's and lithium batteries and more importantly you've been able to come up with a pretty good idea of which battery will suit your needs best at the end of the day you've got to think about your 12-volt system what you want out of it how you're going to have your vehicle for and what you're prepared to spend on it when you get all those things right that'll really help you make a better choice of what battery will suit your needs better so in my opinion i think if you can justify the cost once you have lithium well heck there's no turning back those things are absolutely insane and they'll transform the way you camp
• 20:00 - 20:30 out in the bush that's enough from me hope you enjoyed this video i'll see you around next time [Music]