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Old 08-12-2018, 10:43 AM   #12
Maerin
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City: East Coast
Vessel Name: M/V Maerin (Sold)
Vessel Model: Solo 4303
Join Date: Jun 2013
Posts: 886
I'm in the "Lifelines are expensive" column. I had a bank of (6)-GPL-16-2V, about 1200 AH. Mine failed prematurely. If you read the Lifeline manual, you'll see that they measure service life in cycles vs. state of charge/depth of discharge. Chronological age is meaningless.

My bank did not survive due to inadequate charging. If you have no accurate means of measuring accumulated amp hours, e.g. a battery monitor of the coloumb counting technology, then investing in a Lifeline bank is a huge waste of money and effort, since you have no way of assessing the state of charge of the bank. Chronic undercharging is death for a battery bank.



I'll strongly 2nd David's assessment, all sound advice.



Your use of the bank and how you cruise must be what establishes the design of the system, of which the battery bank is a part. So, rather than tunnel focus on the batteries, expand the view to the whole system. Set it up to do what's required for the intended use of the boat. If you spend considerable time at anchor, solar is a great option, since it will complete the float portion of the charge cycle, critical to the life of the bank. Fully charging by genset can take MANY hours of running under minimal load. Wasteful, and not good for the generator, but critical for the bank. If you're underway a lot of the time, assess your alternator capacity, invest in a smart regulator and abandon the internal regulator that is inadequate for charging a large bank. At that juncture, you need to determine if your alternator will survive heavy loading that accompanies charging a large bank. Most OEM will not. Again, without a battery monitor, you're just guessing. Battery state simply cannot be determined by glancing at a voltmeter.

If you decide to change batteries, consider Full River AGM's. Less initial cost than Lifelines, available in similar configurations, good quality. It bears repeating that no bank, regardless of manufacturer, will endure the abuse of chronic undercharging.
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