Aluminum Camper Forum

Very nice. Well done.

I'm glad you made the jump and I can offer my experience and research for others. When we got our trailer we wanted solar and knew we would only go with lithium. There are some aspect of lithium that I think are being missed.

For starters, 100ah Li is equivalent to around double or triple of your AGM. Much of this has to do with the ability to be able to discharge down to 0%. Some state that they prefer 20% and either way that's 30 to 50% more usability than AGM. Furthermore, the voltage doesn't drop over time, they recharge fast, and they have a cycle life of 5,000 to 10,000 cycles! So AGM batteries have a cycle of like 500 and a Li battery would pay for itself in the few times AGM were replaced. Yet they would still last 10 to 20 years! It's what they use in a Prius. You can ignore  the generator and buy a Li battery.

We went with 3 Renogy Li batteries, installed in the pass through with a fold down enclosure. We have a go power controller and 2000watt inverter. With this setup, all of our plugs are hot. We can plug anything in (yet we put in 12v/usb ports in a few places like the TV). The initial cost is higher, but it pays for itself quickly. You can do more, for a longer period of time, with Li. We would need a lot of AGM batteries to meet our demands (think of the weight!) Li batteries weigh 20lbs each!

It's hard to embrace these new smart batteries, but when you do the math, look at the cost benefit analysis, Li by far comes out on top. Plus, the prices are dropping fast.