The van is so many things to us: our home, our transportation, our baby; but mostly it’s our keys to freedom. We bought it at a time in our lives when we were feeling trapped, sucked into a life we weren’t sure that we had really chosen or wanted. As we have leaned into our life on the road, we have found ourselves aiming for more and more remote places. The camper hookups on the side of the van are woefully underused (we have never plugged in once since owning the van!) as we dive deeper and deeper into the wilderness. Off-grid. As we push further away from civilization, we have run up against several limiting factors in our ability to survive off-grid: food, water, fuel, and power. The one that has become the most limiting to us this year has been power. Multiple times a day we glance at the battery volt meter to monitor the voltage and make sure we have enough juice left to get us through the night until the sun comes out again or we run the van. Even with 120 AH (Amp-hours) of deep-cycle battery, we have still had to decide on several occasions if we want to charge our phones or run the fridge overnight. The problem with our system has a few layers. For starters, lead acid, or even gel batteries, are not useable to their full capacity. Anyone who knows about these batteries will tell you that if you discharge a lead acid or gel battery too far, you do irreparable damage and start to reduce the battery’s life. You only have access to about 50% of the battery’s reserve before you start doing this damage. That means that our 120AH of battery is actually closer to 60 AH of useable power. On top of that, lead acid and gel batteries have a finite number of power cycles (charge and discharge) before they begin to deteriorate. Typically, somewhere between 200-1000 cycles depending on the battery. Since we cycle the battery daily, that means our batteries only have about a year or two of life before they start dying. This has left us with a battery system that is delicate at best and that has deteriorated significantly after only a year of use. So this year we are making a change and installing the battery system we should have put in in the first place: A lithium iron phosphate battery. We get almost double the power out of the Lithium battery on the right than we did out of the two deep cycle batteries on the left! So why Lithum? Lithium batteries offer a TON of advantages over older battery chemistries. The biggest advantages for a van or bus setup are: 1. You have access to almost the whole battery reserve. So 100 Ah of a lithium battery is really 100 Ah! For us that means we can get away with a smaller battery, and still get that power we need. The van is small, and space is precious. No need to store unusable battery capacity. 2. Lithium Iron Phosphate battery (Lithium LiFePO4 Battery) have a much longer life span than lead acid or gel batteries. Not only in years (10+ years vs 2-5 years), but in cycles. SPF100 battery we ultimately ch...

Rechargeable Lithium Ion Battery is a kind of energy storage conversion device which is more and more widely used, because its excellent electrochemical performance realizes a market application scenario that keeps pace with the times. When we talk about the correct use of lithium battery, we usually refer to small applications, namely consumer electronics, such as smart phones, computers. Because large and medium-sized applications are based on small application technology, small applications have common characteristics, and large and medium-sized applications are much more complex. Usually, medium-sized applications are on new energy vehicles, generally we call them power batteries; large applications are usually on base stations, generally we call them energy storage batteries. So when we talk about the use of lithium batteries, limiting lithium batteries to small applications is in line with people's habitual understanding. The working principle of lithium batteries is nothing more than charging to store energy, discharging into other energy and releasing. The lithium batteries are idle when they are neither charged nor discharged. Therefore, the correct use of lithium batteries has three major aspects: correct charging, correct discharging and correct maintenance. Correct charging method for lithium batteries Grasp the time and prevent overcharging. The right time to do the right thing, although the lithium battery itself has excellent electrochemical performance, however, any kind of thing will have security risks after deviating from the equilibrium state. Let's look at the lithium batteries in mobile phones. 1. when charging is done. One of the problems that users should pay attention to when charging is to keep the battery with normal usage at any time. Normally, when the power is too low, such as mobile phones and computers, there will be a reminder. At this time, you need to replenish the power in time. Although the low power will not lead to a direct safety accident, overuse will cause damage to the battery structure over time. 2, fill it up. The interior of lithium battery batteries is also made up of many components. The new batteries are good. If it takes a long time, the function of one component will decline, so the safety risk of overcharge will occur. Samsung and Apple are exposed to typical accidents, several are due to the owner of electrical appliances when he sleeps to put his mobile phone on the bedside charging, and eventually triggered a combustion and explosion. 3. Don't use both of your heart and soul. The author has experienced that it is easy to feel hot when using mobile phone while charging, especially when playing games. The reason is simple. Mobile phone is equal to two jobs at the same time, which makes it have to pay more than twice the labor force, and the body will naturally get hot. Correct Discharge Method for Lithium Batteries Charge in time to prevent over-discharge. Ordinary mobile phone users are not aw...