Lithium Upgrade

I've got a secret I've been keeping since early February.

This upgrade was not only expensive, it was very time consuming and extremely technical in nature. But I'm glad I did it. We took the boat out last weekend, two days of no shore-power, for sea-trial to test out the new house battery (and really, my entire electrical system).

I'm also asking for your help. LaZina and I are working on a video for our YouTube channel (Let's go channels surfing) and thought we'd solicit questions from you, to make sure when we record the video next week we don't leave any important details out.

I've just published to our web site a ton of photographs of the upgrade (a slide-show). It's a visual story of the upgrade. I also did a technical write-up which illustrates the design drawings I created for this project (electrical schematic). I don't want an unsupportable boat. Thus, every change I make must be documented. ABYC standards were also very important to me as I want to make sure my boat is safe and would easily pass a marine survey.

Many folks have asked me about lithium batteries on our Ranger Tugs. RT offers (6) 100ah Dakota Lithium Iron Phosphate (LFP) on their Luxury editions to run air conditioning as an option, but not on their Northwest Editions. Channel Surfing is an RT27-OB Northwest Edition and came with AGM batteries. I went with a UL approved Lithioncs 320Ah single battery.

Please drop any questions you have about this LFP upgrade in the comments section and I'll be sure to answer them when we record the upcoming YouTube video. Thank you!