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When you’re looking to power your #vanlife, the first thing you need to decide is: what type of battery do you want to use?
There are a LOT of options, but the main ones boil down to five different types: flooded, sealed, , AGM, gel and lithium. Flooded are useless, as they generally are starter batteries, and don’t do the deep discharge you need for powering your #vanlife setups. Sealed are a little better, but those deep discharge batteries (if you can find them) don’t last very long at all. AGM and Gel are better, but both need to be handled correctly (a Gel being deep discharged frequently – as will happen in #vanlife, doesn’t have a long life, and AGM’s must be kept above roughly 50% of their charge).
We started off with cheapo AGM deep discharge batteries, and discovered some unfortunate truths about them. With AGM batteries, since they need to be kept above 50% of their charge, their usability is roughly half of what the battery capacity is (for example, our two 105ah batteries were only good for a combined total of 105ah before they needed to be charged up). Also, we discovered that these batteries can very easily drop below that charge (say if you’re running something like a computer), and it PERMANENTLY damages them if they do. Unless you’re going to be somewhere very cold for extended periods, then, your best bet is to go with lithium batteries.
When we discovered our batteries were under-performing for our needs, we decided to step up to lithium batteries. Unfortunately, we were in Quartzsite, Arizona (and not during the annual RV show), and decided to stop at a rather expensive dealer, who sold us a Lion Energy 1300 lithium battery. Since it was a 105ah battery, we assumed it would perform about as well as our two AGM batteries had. Boy, were we in for a surprise. This thing outperformed our AGM batteries by so much, we discovered we didn’t need another battery – we just needed more solar panels to keep up with charging this beast to 100%!
Unfortunately for our wallets, however, this upgrade was pricey. Not counting the $300 we had spent on the AGM batteries (which we could not get covered by warranty, and ended up selling them to O’Reilly’s for $10 each), this new battery (even on sale) cost us $750. That is pretty expensive for a battery like this. Not to mention, apparently it was on sale because a new version (the 1300 BT) was being released. Now, even if we wanted to, we would be hard pressed to find another battery like this for Bessie the van. We’d have to upgrade (again) to the 1300 BT version (which is bluetooth enabled).
If we had been able to hold out until we had access to an Amazon dropbox, we would have gone the cheaper route and gotten one (or two) of the Li Time 100ah batteries. Those are less than half the price of one of these Lion Energy lithium batteries (and we’ve heard good things about them too).
Although the price is steep, the quality of this battery is very impressive, and if you’re looking for something that will go the long haul, this certainly will.
