Lithium Batteries

[CrowMan]

Shopping around for a lithium battery for a 55 lb MinnKota. I usually use this motor on a little 12ft jon boat that I pack into back lakes for trout...hence the weight and capacity of a lithium are very appealing.

The EcoWorthy 100ah are selling for $479 cdn directly from them or Amazon. This compares to almost double the money for the comparable Dakota product...which seems to be the leading brand. Spec's seem the same.

I'm always skeptical when I see such a price disparity. I understand that "price" and "value" are two different things...usually going by Benjamin Franklin's old adage of "the bitterness of poor quality remains much longer than the sweet taste of a low price".

I have a 10ah Dakota lithium that I have used for 4 seasons of ice fishing with a Helix, and no complaints.  Anyone have experience with EcoWorthy ? Or other lithium batteries in general ?

 

[Fisherman]

 

2 hours ago, CrowMan said:

Shopping around for a lithium battery for a 55 lb MinnKota. I usually use this motor on a little 12ft jon boat that I pack into back lakes for trout...hence the weight and capacity of a lithium are very appealing.

The EcoWorthy 100ah are selling for $479 cdn directly from them or Amazon. This compares to almost double the money for the comparable Dakota product...which seems to be the leading brand. Spec's seem the same.

I'm always skeptical when I see such a price disparity. I understand that "price" and "value" are two different things...usually going by Benjamin Franklin's old adage of "the bitterness of poor quality remains much longer than the sweet taste of a low price".

I have a 10ah Dakota lithium that I have used for 4 seasons of ice fishing with a Helix, and no complaints.  Anyone have experience with EcoWorthy ? Or other lithium batteries in general ?

 

You might want to do some diligent research.  A quick look at their reviews didn't see a lot of smiling faces. https://ca.trustpilot.com/review/www.eco-worthy.com

All I could find for warranty was 3 years, so if it craps out, guess what. 

[BillM]

Dakota is banking on you thinking their name means anything and paying the price for it.   From the little research I've done there it seems like due to expiring patents more and more companies are jumping on the bandwagon and producing them.   

Check out Will Prowse on Youtube, he goes through a lot of manufacturers, you'll figure out which batteries are worth it and which one's aren't. 

I've never pay the premium for Dakota lithiums btw.  

[Fisherman]

Watched a number of his video's, well worth it.

[Brown]

There are other reputable brands less expensive than Dakota, I’ve been using Lynac Lithium (2-60Ah and 1-14ah) out of Thunder Bay for the last five seasons and stoked with their performance.  I am using a 65lb brushless motor on my kayak and have  covered 20klms on a single battery (not trolling).  

[ptf]

I just purchased two 100ah batteries from Aolthium Canada web site . 

I received them in January so have not used them yet but they look to be very good quality .

They also have bluetooth so you can see on your phone the state of charge and current draw

$599.00 with free shipping to canada .

Make sure you are on the Canadian web site , they have sites for different countrys .

They have tear down videos that show the quality of the parts they use .

I am happy with my purchase so far , but have only charged them up to store until April .

I check the state of charge on my phone just to see how they are holding a charge and they have not lost any power yet .

[RandyLinden]

Hi 
I was at the point where I needed to replace my boat batteries last spring and wanted to get a new set of Lithium's but the cost was more than double that of Trojans (One of the best wet cell batteries I have ever used and what I was replacing after 5 years of heavy use) but when I took a look at Amazon I found these for about $100 more and decided to give them a go. 

LifePo4 Battery 12V 100Ah 10000+ Deep Cycles with 100A BMS Grade A Cells for Solar Trolling Motor RV Camping Off-Grid System Household Appliances with Low Temp Protection : Amazon.ca: Sports & Outdoors

Used them last season and I am pleased with how well they work. I no longer fish tournaments so I just used the charger that was supplied and had no issues. The batteries were delivered within two days from a warehouse in Montreal. They were well packaged. After hooking up the chargers I noticed that one was not functioning (no LED indicator and no cooling fan operation) I reported the problem and immediately received a replacement charger, so great customer service from Flypower. I plan to add a battery monitoring system this year just because I think it would be interesting to understand how much power I'm actually using.

My boat has two Lowrance 12" and one 9" display as well as structure scan, active target and a stereo system all operating from one battery and the Ghost trolling motor operates on two more batteries on 24V. I still have a big wet cell cranking battery for the engine.

The batteries have reduced the weight in the back of the boat significantly and I feel like it gets on plane a bit easier. At about $400 a piece I would buy these again and may repower my electric golf cart this summer with them. 

[AKRISONER]

the price of these things is collapsing, I somewhat regret going with my 4 AGM's but I couldnt get the price where I wanted it at the time. I wish I could run two 36v lithiums and then have a stand alone 12 for my electronics. We will see how my cranking battery holds up this season, if I start running into issues I may be forced to make the switch anyways.

[CrowMan]

9 minutes ago, AKRISONER said:

the price of these things is collapsing, I somewhat regret going with my 4 AGM's but I couldnt get the price where I wanted it at the time. I wish I could run two 36v lithiums and then have a stand alone 12 for my electronics. We will see how my cranking battery holds up this season, if I start running into issues I may be forced to make the switch anyways.

Yeah...it's crazy,  just in the past month or so that I've been looking, the prices have dropped almost week by week. I think I've got it narrowed down to a few brands, but welcome more input.

Many thanks to those who have shared their experiences.

[BillM]

I'd also be buying from the US and using a service like Crossborderpickups.    Seems like we're still paying a really high premium over here. 

[tbayboy]

I picked up a couple 12v60ah lifepo4's from canbat (canbat.com) for my 80lb ulterra last spring after the original lead acid's hit their end of life.  They were really good guys to deal with and were very responsive when I was asking questions varying from capacity needs (they didn't push to upsell) to post sizes etc.  Found quite a few reviews of the company that were good and they do a 10 year warranty and I didn't want to deal with any cross border stuff. I also picked up a Norco charger (3 bank charger - 2 for these guys) which works great - don't forget to include that in your budget.  

After one season I'm really happy. The bluetooth app makes it really easy to use tell how much juice you have left (will show me how many hours at the current draw and so on) and over the winter I don't do anything - they were at 70% after the last time on the water and they're still at 70% here in March. 

[Terry]

I thought lithium batteries should never be left not fully charged for any period of time 

[tbayboy]

What I read and was told was anywhere from 50%+ is good for longer term storage (https://battlebornbatteries.com/faq-how-to-winterize-your-batteries , https://explorevanx.com/blog/how-to-store-lifepo4-12v-batteries, https://www.evlithium.com/Blog/how-to-store-lifepo4-batteries-for-long-term.html and others). The idea is to ensure any residual self discharge won't put you in a danger level where you kill the battery as apparently the batttery monitoring systems can't detect/help with this slow drain.

But that does bring up one point that I really found when investigating last winter: because its relatively new tech for our use cases (using them as deep cycle batteries in a boat) the info is really all over the place. How best to charge, how to store, how to protect them, what to look for when buying - you'll find a lot of different answers to any given question.  Hopefully that all settles as more people use them in situations like us but for now I'd just recommend making sure to not trust any one source of info and if you can get an answer from the seller/warrantor that would be best (canbat told me they'd be fine at anything over 50% for the winter - https://www.canbat.com/faq-lithium-iron-phosphate-lifepo4/)

Oh and for my case they're stored in the boat in a heated (10 degrees) garage. Storing them in below freezing and especially charging in below freezing is a whole different thing.

Now someone remind me to follow up here next month when I take the boat out and find out that all the answers are wrong and I'm out of power 10 feet from the dock

[BillM]

If you're going to use these and charge them in below zero temps you'll want a battery with an integrated low temp sensor.  Below a certain point it will cut off charging if the temp is too low.     Those Will Prowse vids are great, I love the fact he rips a lot of these apart and shows you why some are good and some are garbage.   Some of the really decent ones are selling for real cheap on Amazon.com.   Would be nice to replace the two Group 31 AGMs I've got upfront for the TM.    

[BassMan11]

Really like the option of Lithium's as the price comes comes down. Those CANBAT's are a decent price. The trolling motor batteries are a no brainer, but how about a starting or house battery? Can they be charged off the outboards alternator properly? How about using a ACR system to charge the starting and house? Does that need any additional equipment? 

I currently have 2 group 31 AGM's and 2 group 24 AGM's which equals about 220lbs of weight in batteries. I'd love to reduce that with a lithium solution. 

Great thread. 

[tbayboy]

Starting/Cranking battery is a whole other thing. There are some lithium batteries now that can be used apparently but there's also a lot of info about how they could void your motors warranty (different power ranges or something like that) and from what I saw you couldn't use the alternator without a bunch of extra stuff.  I'm sure that'll change in the next little while but I decided to put that off and stuck with a big AGM for my starter and electronics/house power

You could absolutely use a small(ish) lithium for the house needs (size it based on your transducer/graphs/etc). I hooked up a meter to the battery and went around turning everything on and came up with about 4amp so a 60ah batter would do me 15 hours (roughly).  But since I had just bought a new big group 31 agm for the starter and all the wiring for the rest of the boats electronics was already setup for that I left it as is. If I end up with a lot more electronics I might consider a dedicated battery but it's not worth it for me at the moment.  

The noco charger I have is 3 banks and can do any mix of battery types so it can charge my 2 lithiums and the agm starter (https://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/B08G3DLYX8/)

 

Edited March 7, 2023 by tbayboy

[DRIFTER_016]

Dakota has 11 years warranty, how long is the warranty on the cheap one?

Edited March 7, 2023 by DRIFTER_016

[CrowMan]

1 hour ago, DRIFTER_016 said:

Dakota has 11 years warranty, how long is the warranty on the cheap one?

Dakota...11 year warranty...$999

Flypower...5 year warranty...$399

So... after 5 years, you buy a brand new one and if it lasts longer it's a bonus. Also, I would imagine that in 5 years the price will be lower....or perhaps some newer technology will be the shiny object that catches your eye...just sayin'

That being said, at this point I'm leaning towards the AOLithium.  When considering the feature-set (I like the BlueTooth monitoring) and construction, it seems to offer the best overall value..but haven't pulled the trigger yet..

Edited March 7, 2023 by CrowMan

[BillM]

Weize 12V 100ah Lithium has a 10 year warranty, currently selling for $299 US.   So $600US + charger and you've got a nice setup for your TM.    

[RandyLinden]

13 hours ago, BillM said:

Weize 12V 100ah Lithium has a 10 year warranty, currently selling for $299 US.   So $600US + charger and you've got a nice setup for your TM.    

I looked at the Weize but wasn't able to find them available in Canada. You can buy them on Amazon.com but theywill not ship to Canada. Even if you have them delivered to a Kinek box they cost more than the Flypower with the high dollar exchange and then you still need to pay applicable duty and taxes. Even though they have a 10 year warranty I think the Flypower"s with the 5 year warranty are a better deal right now and they have good support from their warehouse in Montreal.

[BillM]

1 hour ago, RandyLinden said:

I looked at the Weize but wasn't able to find them available in Canada. You can buy them on Amazon.com but theywill not ship to Canada. Even if you have them delivered to a Kinek box they cost more than the Flypower with the high dollar exchange and then you still need to pay applicable duty and taxes. Even though they have a 10 year warranty I think the Flypower"s with the 5 year warranty are a better deal right now and they have good support from their warehouse in Montreal.

Crossborderpickups my man.   Makes shipping things directly to Canada and all the Bull that comes along with it a thing of the past. 

[RandyLinden]

1 hour ago, BillM said:

Crossborderpickups my man.   Makes shipping things directly to Canada and all the Bull that comes along with it a thing of the past. 

Hi, I'm not trying to argue but using Crossborderpickups cost about 15.00 per package plus duties and taxes plus a 3% transaction fee. It could be good if you live in the GTA but elsewhere not so great. If you live within a reasonable distance to a border crossing a Kinek address works really well. You will need to drive over and pick it up and then clear it thru customs. Kinek provides you with a US address to ship things to and in some cases you can save a bunch of money however I don't see it with the Weize batteries in this scenario.

[akaShag]

tagged for interest

[BillM]

On 3/8/2023 at 11:26 AM, RandyLinden said:

Hi, I'm not trying to argue but using Crossborderpickups cost about 15.00 per package plus duties and taxes plus a 3% transaction fee. It could be good if you live in the GTA but elsewhere not so great. If you live within a reasonable distance to a border crossing a Kinek address works really well. You will need to drive over and pick it up and then clear it thru customs. Kinek provides you with a US address to ship things to and in some cases you can save a bunch of money however I don't see it with the Weize batteries in this scenario.

I find the 'bonus' of using CBP is that I end up declaring the value of the goods 99% of the time.   I always forget a 0 or 2 lol. 

[Dan668]

Considering upgrading my Northstar cranking/house agm. But still doing research. Some are for. Some are aagainst. Hard to say. Great to see the prices falling over the past year or two.