After our consultation with Denis and Sean from Battle Born Batteries, we decided to move forward with a full lithium battery installation!
They put us in touch with a local RV dealership they recommended called Sprad’s RV. Lucky for us, they were able to get us in for our installation immediately.
We purchased and installed the following:
6x Battle Born 100Ah 12V LiFePO4 Deep Cycle Battery
Weighing in at a sleek 29 lbs, the 100 amp hour, 12 volt Battle Born Battery dances circles around the competition. The Battle Born Battery also requires no new hardware to run in your RV. Just pull out that grungy old lead acid battery (use two hands, those suckers are heavy), drop in this elegant upgrade, and get yourself out there.
These are the heart of our whole system. We started with one battery to replace our lead-acid and then after loving the performance purchased five more. The six batteries are perfect for our usage of a tech-heavy full-time RV giving us 2-3 days without any recharging. The ten-year warranty gives us peace of mind that we won’t need to worry about our batteries for a long time.
2x Victron Energy 3000W Multiplus Inverter/Charger 3000W 12V
The MultiPlus, as the name suggests, is a combined inverter and charger in one elegant package. Its many features include a true sine wave inverter, adaptive charging, hybrid PowerAssist technology, plus multiple system integration features.
We went with a little different installation than normal, opting for two inverters. This gives us 3000 watts of power on each leg and enables us to use our RV no different when on shore power than on battery power. Most people can get away with one inverter and specifying which outlets and appliances you want to be powered.
These beefy fuses will protect our wiring and RV from overcurrent and potential fire. We have one for each positive cable between the batteries and the invertors.
1x Victron Energy BVM712 Battery Monitor
This is one of the most important parts of our installation. The 4 lights on the battery monitor that came with our RV is in the dark ages compared to this monitor. The Bluetooth connectivity allows us to monitor our batteries from anywhere in the RV.
1x Victron Energy Color Control GX System Control Screen
The Color Control GX is the communication center of our installation. It offers at-a-glance live information and lets us control all our Victron products connected to it. Full system control is gained – almost anywhere in the world – by accessing our Color Control GX using the free-to-use Victron Remote Management Portal.
EasyStart is a one-of-a-kind, custom-developed soft starter for single-phase motors. It employs a 4-part start ramp sequence that is self-optimizing, resulting in the lowest possible start-up current. EasyStart can deliver 65-75% start current reduction as compared to a compressor’s LRA (locked-rotor amperage). EasyStart is the perfect solution that allows an air conditioner compressor to operate on a generator, inverter, or limited utility power when it would otherwise not have functioned.
All of that fancy language to say this allows us to run our A/Cs off our batteries! We were originally only going to purchase one but decided on getting a second last minute just in case we accidentally used our other A/C while on battery power.
I am going to mimic your setup! What happens when you connect to 30 amp power instead of 50 amp? I’m assuming each one of your inverters powers each leg of your panel?
30 amp causes the master inverter to pass-through power and charges the batteries while the other inverter powers the other leg from the battery if it is in “Split-phase”. You can change the software so they run in parallel but I have been too lazy to do that yet. Make sure that your master inverter powers the leg of power that you will want to use more often. My microwave, living room A/C, and water heater all are on the slave so it pulls from the battery instead of passing through. Didn’t think about that when configuring.
How much was the cost of the install of this system. Looks like the parts were $8324.35 not including cables and other parts not listed.
We partnered with Battle Born Batteries and Victron on this install so our cost was subsidized. That is a pretty good estimate though. This build is not for everyone.
Does your electrical system run both multiplus units on one 12 Volt bank of 6 batteries in parallel or do you split the batteries into two sets of 3 batteries in parallel and each set of 3 batteries running their own multiplus? And why did you choose the way yours would be set up?
Thanks,
Don
Noob question, why not go solar as well?