I've heard a lot of good things about these Lithium batteries and I just wanted to get everyone's opinion on them. I already have a couple lead acid batteries that I've made do with for smaller projects but I'm thinking about going for something bigger. The battery I'm thinking about getting is a 7.7 pound 12 volt 20 amp hour lithium ion deep cycle battery Smart Battery® 12V 20AH Lithium Ion Battery I plan on using it for charging my laptop, phone, running a fan and maybe even a small cooler that I'm hoping I can make ice with. I was also hoping to try connecting a HDTV projector to it as well but I think that might be too much for the battery. My methods for charging this battery besides using an outlet will be with solar panels and a 5 gallon bucket hydroelectric generator (yes I'm building one) which uses a Toyota alternator. Any tips, info or suggestions would be appreciated.
All secondary lithium chemistry batteries could be considered "deep cycle". Look up genasun or Morningstar TriStar sun saver. Genasun makes charge controllers for different lithium chemistries. The Morningstar charge controller, tho made for lead acid can be set with its dip switches and by adding a resistor to the temperature sensor input to make it lithium friendly.
That sounds like a good deal but I'm nowhere close to southern California and I'm sure my car wouldn't make it. What are those though? Did he call them Tessa batteries?
Is this the same technology?LiFePO4 Battery: 12V 20Ah ( 240Wh) with Controller for Solar Power Storage
With standard batteries, the usual consideration is, never discharge below half the max AH rating, so you can usebonly 10AH of the 20AH max. This minimises damage and you recharge back to max. But...... this may not apply to Li batteries? I have little experience with them.
You should be able to discharge LiFePO4 down to around 20% with out hurting them. Hybrid cars using various lithium chemistries like to stay between 40% and 90%. So I would say try to not discharge below 40% and never below 20%.