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Lost shore power on Lithiums
#1

When I was visiting the coach on Saturday an electrician was there as he was wiring up individual meters for each stall at the storage facility.  Power was off to both of my stalls and before I left we had power back on 458, but not on 653.  I asked him when he'd be done and he said in about an hour.  Didn't think much about it until I showed up this morning to not just no shore power, but no power at all inside the coach.  Got the shore power turned back on and still no power to the coach and I'm getting a "Dead Batt Charge" on my Magnum screen and zero volts at the house batteries when checking with volt meter.

I get Battleborn on the horn and their initial advice was to pull the coach outside (I did still have chassis batteries) and then hook up the house batteries to my car via jumper cables.  I mentioned to them that I do have the ability to merge house/chassis batteries on the coach and he said I might want to try that first.  Trying to cover all of my bases I called Johnson Net for a little more phone support and Bill confirmed that a merge would be the first place to start.

Merged the batteries for roughly 5 minutes before they woke up and went back into bulk charge mode.  From everything I can gather the batteries did everything they were supposed to do by shutting down once the threshold was hit on the low voltage cutoff and that is why the showed zero.  Also good to know that when that happens a quick merge can get things back to life.  

Now I need to give some thought and time as to why I have enough draw when parked to take me down to that LVCO mark in roughly 48 hours.  I mean, it could have been longer than that as I didn't quiz the electrician as to when he cut off power to that stall, I just assumed it was Saturday.  I have nothing else running on purpose like my Aquahot as it hasn't got cold enough yet to fire that up so I'm a bit stumped.  All in all it's a good day though when things do what they are supposed to do and it reinforces my love of lithium.

Brad Aden
2003 Newell #653 Quad Slide Cat C-12 engine
St. Louis, MO
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#2

Brad,

good report!

I agree the Lithiums should run more than 48 hours with nothing running….So I would suggest the following…

1. Check the bay heaters (2 thermostats in the water bay) to see what they are set to. One controls the electric fan above the AH and the other is a fan fight above the water tank.

2. Check the inside electric heater (thermostat by the door). Make sure the AH is not running (At all). You should see LO on the AH temp display.

3. Make sure the BBs are fully charged at the remote control panel and double check that you have 13.7ish at the BBs.

4. Disconnect from shore power and start monitoring the voltage at the BBs every hour. See if you can see the voltage drop then extend the line until the cutoff voltage. This should tell you the actual discharge rate that the batteries are experiencing.

Side note: Lithiums are different from normal AGM and Lead acid batteries. Their discharge profile is very, very flat until you run out of juice and then it drops like a rock. At some point (not sure of how the BBs decide this) the BBs will simply cut off.

5. Verify that the Low voltage cutoff on the Magnum is set ABOVE the BB cutoff. (I bet BB will tell you the exact number they use).

This is an experiment that I never got done, but I suspect that you will find there is a current draw that is pulling batts down.

Good luck!

Bill

Bill Johnson
Birmingham, Alabama
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#3

IIRC the engine computer will have a constant draw. Does your coach have an echo charger or similar? That pulls a small amount of power from the house batteries to charge the chassis batteries. That along with other things like any phone chargers, etc. and the AquaHot basement heaters can cause a drop. These heaters' fans may run whether the aquahot is on or not.

Forest & Cindy Olivier
1987 log cabin
2011 Roadtrek C210P
PO 1999 Foretravel 36'
1998 Newell 45' #486 

1993 Newell 39' #337 
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