Speaking of Batteries

I am curious what peoples thoughts are regarding charging the various lithium batteries on the market today.
I run 12v/10Ah’s on my Vexilars, the vex battery indicator always reads 100% no matter how much I’ve used them. The battery I use for lights seems to never need charging but I do top them all off after each use…I let them warm up over night before charging…
The Dewalt batteries I use on the drill/clam plate usually can go several trips without a charge but I don’t cut too many holes..
and the Strikemaster 24 is too new to add here but it too has not seemed to need charging after a few trips (BTW, It cuts awesome)
I also have a lithium shuttle that still says 100% after I stopped using it and stored it two years ago..
Anyway, how often do you charge your lithium’s and when storing over summer do you store with a full charge or about 75%.. Thanks in advance, Have a Great Day!

Most manufacturers recommend charging after every use, not leaving them on the charger once charged, and topping them off every six months if not used.

I put a new vexilar lithium battery in my vexilar flx 28 and after 9 hours of fishing the charger still said it was full. After 2 days it would finally take a charge. Thats using vexilar charger and battery.

What’s FLP- Next Generation lithium? Fleet is pushing them.

I believe its an acronym for Full Life Po4…
if you take a look at James Holst’s video I think he explained it…

snelson223 wrote:

I put a new vexilar lithium battery in my vexilar flx 28 and after 9 hours of fishing the charger still said it was full. After 2 days it would finally take a charge. Thats using vexilar charger and battery.

You used 2 amp hours in those 9 hours.

On a 10 amp hour battery it would have drawn it down to 80% or so, regardless of what your charger said or a battery gauge shows.

Lithium holds its voltage till they die say 13.5v for 10 hours on your 12v 10amp battery. Lead acid drop voltage as you use them say they start at 13.5v but after 4 hours they are at 12.4. That’s how your battery gauge works, with the new batteries it thinks its always at 100%

From what I was told, most flashers/sonar battery displays are not designed to read lithium batteries. Therefore when running lithium batteries it will show 100% life until your sonar shuts off and your battery is dead.

I also recently heard someone saying that if you drain lithium batteries below 50% it can permanently lower the charging capacity of said battery the next time you charge. I have no idea if that is true. Hoping it isn’t because that would be really inefficient.

Most Lithium batteries that have voltages higher than 1.5 volts have battery management systems (BMS). Since a 12 volt battery is made up of a combination of series and parallel connections of 1.25+ volt smaller batteries, the BMS monitors the charge and discharge of the parallel connection. The BMS will generally shutdown the battery output before you damage the cells and when charging it will distribute the charge voltage to the banks that need it the most.

If you are running a LiFEPO with BMS I would expect about 2000 charge discharge cycles. And if charged when put away they should be able to sit for a good year before needing to be recharged. (loss < 3% per month)

IF a LiFEPO cell(not a BMS controled battery) is discharged until it is dead you will not be able to bring it back to life with charging.

Thanks for all the reply’s! They are helpful to me learning about lithium’s…

LFP = LiFePO = LiFePO4 = lithium iron phosphate

JasonP wrote:

LFP = LiFePO = LiFePO4 = lithium iron phosphate

LOL The “LIFE-P-O-4” comment from the video had me rolling. Basic chemistry is like a foreign language to some.

Slightly off topic here…I have LiFePO4 lithium batteries from several different companies (Amped, Marcum, Norsk). Anyone know if I can charge them all with my NOCO Genius charger instead of having all of these different manufacturer’s chargers around?

You should check the manual for your model. But according to the manuals online for the recent model genius’s, if it has a 12V Lithium mode, then you can charge LiFePO4 batteries that have a BMS (battery management system).

There are a lot of acronyms I did a deep dive on this tech last spring when I invested in LiFePO4 for my trolling motor.

Other battery papers I have read suggest most of the wear is cause by going very low and very high. They had graphs showing that charging from 25% up to 75% would result in many times the rated cycles. Letting it go down only to 75% and then charging up to 100% was not a big savings. I try to use mine down below half at least, and then for my drill battery, which has a lot of extra, I stop charging when the 4th bar starts blinking.
To be honest, for fishing only batteries, it should be a non- issue, but for tool batteries that are used year round, life can become an issue over time.
The article also said to store at 75% charged.