Questions and Answers
Questions About Us
Our goal is to put our best-selves forward in the service of energy-transition, specializing in batteries and battery-related projects. Saying we “put our best-selves forward” means we try to model honesty, integrity, and foster win-win situations. We welcome honest feedback on our FAQs, or any other matter.
Abbreviations Explained
The State of Charge is how full your battery is (from 0-100%). Sometimes, the State of Charge (not just “full” or “empty”) is important: for example, you don’t ever want to drain even a deep-cycle Lead-Acid battery below 50% SOC. Sadly, the “fuel” gauge for a non-Lithium battery does not accurately measure State of Charge, it is really just a volt-meter; the needle will drop dramatically when you go up a hill (draw a bunch of power), then back up again.
Introduction to Lithium
In other-words, “I’ve heard how great lithium is, but what do I say to my wife/boss/partner?” Like most things in life, you get what you pay for, and Lithium is a really smart buy. Continue reading for details, however you win environmentally, financially, on performance, and ease-of-ownership. If you might want to sell your cart after 5-years, aaLithium adds significant value. The it will unquestionably still be in good shape, while your Lead-Acid batteries will be a liability.
Switching-Over to Lithium
A single 56Ah 48V Lithium battery will normally replace the Lead-Acid batteries in your golf cart. Within a year or so, the Lithium will not have changed much, and your Lead-Acid batteries will be on their way down, especially in the cold (see our Tech Sheets for why Lead-Acid is so inferior). You will not quite have the same range as brand new Lead-Acid, but for most people, it is more than enough. Depending-upon the motor in your cart (AC motors are much more efficient), you will have 20 to 35 km range, and more “zip” because they do not suffer the voltage-sag Lead-Acid does with acceleration (or on hills), plus the cart is now 300+ pounds lighter! For a DC cart, if your normal usage is less than 15km/day (more than two rounds of golf), or if it is a newer, AC-powered cart, less than 25 km (EVERY day), your 56Ah battery will still be going strong after 10 years, and should last 15 years with no maintenance, no problems.
Lithium Ownership
See Technical Questions for what not to do. Lithium is really robust, and it must be emphasized, they do not need to be pampered. But there is no need to cause unnecessary degradation if it can be avoided! So, here are some tips for maximizing the life of your battery (20-years!):
The MAIN thing is to buy the right-size battery for your application. Then, most of the issues below will then take care of themselves:
- Unless you have a Big Battery, don’t buy a Big Charger “just because it is faster.” Charging is continuous – the heat builds-up-and-up – and charging faster means more heat, which in this case reduces the life of your battery (a fair bit). Plus, Chargers are expensive! Your existing Lead-Acid Charger is probably in the 10-15A range, which is fine. And don’t forget: Lithium batteries charge 2x faster as well. Twenty Amps is still okay, and within spec (a lot of golf courses use 20A chargers).
- Avoid high and low States of Charge (SOC) for extended periods of time. This means don’t regularly drain your battery to below 10-20% and leave it for two weeks, or – conversely – avoid leaving it fully-charged for long periods, like two weeks. BUT it is fine to plug it in overnight for the next day, or in a few days, all the time. Purchase your battery such that under normal conditions, you have a bit of “juice” left in your tank at the end of the day, then plug it in for tomorrow. This is common-sense; a bit of a safety-factor is what you should aim for, or one day you will be walking home (hopefully not in the rain).
- Don’t overstress your batteries by drawing too much power from them. Unless you are running up and down a mountain/racing your cart, or hauling a heavy load all of the time, you will be fine. A properly-sized LiFePO4 battery has the balance of capacity and power for this not to be an issuepecs . Here’s why: if you do overdraw from them, they will get hot (although the Battery Management System will turn off your battery if you try to draw too-much current). Heat causes unwanted chemical reactions which accumulate – this is what “battery degradation” is. Size the battery for the capacity/range you need, and the power will be there with no issue.
Technical Questions (also see our Tech sheets)
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High Current: As one can imagine, perhaps the most harmful thing you can do to a battery is short-out the terminals - something is going to blow! But why?? Heat. Luckily, there will be plenty of heat, light and melting of metal outside of the battery as well, so we know to avoid this. But you might not have even thought about the heat generated inside the battery. Even if you don't short them out, drawing too much power out of a battery for long periods of time is also very bad because they will heat-up, and unwanted chemical reactions occur which shorten the life and reduce the capacity of your battery. But how much is too much??
Although we are talking about power, think current, as follows: the rating of your battery (in Amp-Hours) is called one "C." It is the current required to drain (or charge) a battery in one hour. Any current over 2C for more than a minute or so (3C for CANLiFe) is going to start to heat it up. So, 3C (4C) is not good, althought its' okay occasionally, like going up a steep hill. Drawing high currents won’t change much right-away, but your battery performance and life will be reduced by quite a bit (years). For a 56Ah battery (C=56 Amps in this case), this would mean routinely drawing more than roughly 200 Amps, which is pretty-much hot-dogging in a souped-up cart, roaring up a hill on a mountain golf course, operating a multi-passenger cart, or hauling a water-tank. In that case, you would purchase a 105Ah battery, which is quite happy at those current levels. A normal golf cart won’t go above 200A often, if ever. As long as you are happy with the range of your battery, normal use will not damage it, and it will last worry-free at least 3x as long as your Lead-Acid.
In case you are wondering about a worst-case scenario, the battery management system has three settings, and will disconnect if the current exceeds the safe threshold 1) for more than one second, 2) 10 seconds and 3) 30 seconds. lf there is a dead-short, it will disconnect in a fraction of a second, give you a chance to think about it, and if you push the ON button again, hopefully the situation has changed.... If the electronics fails inside your battery, there is a physical fuse which will blow permanently, to prevent what is known as “rapid-unscheduled-disassembly.”
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Improper Storage: Lithium batteries can be left at virtually any temperature we are likely to encounter here, but prefer to stay cool, so keep that in mind. Also, you will reduce the life of your batteries by perhaps 10% if you leave them fully-charged all the time, especially for long periods. Charge your battery if you need to and if you don’t use it for a couple of days, no-problem, but if you are going away for a week, try not to leave it full. 40-60% charge is ideal. Don’t sweat-it (these are tough batteries), but just don’t make a habit of leaving your cart plugged-in, like you would with Lead-Acid.
Yes, this is different than for Lead-Acid batteries, which are only happy when fully-charged (or start they “sulfating” – building-up Lead-Sulfide deposits). Lead-Acid will self-discharge if left for a couple of months, suffer damage, and also freeze in the winter, which effectively kills them. Lead-Acid batteries will self-discharge at around 15%/month (it varies a lot with temperature), whereas, LiFePO4 goes down by about 3% per month, and LESS in cold-weather. Over the winter, leave your Lithium at 40-60%, not more (and the colder it is, the better). We just received some batteries which were manufactured in August, 2020. They are charged to 50% in the factory, and a year later, are still at 20-30%
Lithium batteries are similar to Lead-Acid in that they also don’t like to be left fully-discharged. This is REALLY bad for Lead-Acid batteries, but a lot less-so for Lithium batteries. As-above, don’t worry about it too much, but be aware, and don’t make a habit of it. LiFePO4 in particular (vs Lithium-Ion) is tough. Also, for ECO Lithium (but not for cheaper Lithium batteries), when the capacity meter says it is at 0%, the Battery Management System will stop supplying current to protect the cells from damage. The battery actually still has 10% or so capacity. This is also different from Lead-Acid, where there is no protection, and your battery will drain down to the point where it cannot even run your lights, and never be the same. So, because of the built-in protection, as long as you charge your batteries up again fairly soon, you would have to do that many times before degrading the batteries more than 1%.
Products and Pricing
Lithium Titanate (LTO): We are constantly innovating and promoting clean-technology. Lithium Titanate is a very promising (and proven) battery chemistry until-now very expensive, and pretty-much only available for military applications. Although still more expensive (and bigger) than the equivalent in LiFePO4, Lithium Titanate shines because it has :
- An extremely-long life (30 years),
- The ability to produce very high currents, and
- Exceed the performance of all other batteries in extreme cold-weather applications.
We now have our first contract to build Lithium Titanate batteries for cell phone towers, and are looking for additional Partners for Pilot Projects, including their use as starter-batteries.
Alberta is well-positioned to produce Lithium right here, and we should be building our own batteries – LTO batteries. We have great confidence in LTO, and are dedicating significant effort to proving them for ourselves and our customers. This will hopefully lay some of the groundwork to justify producing LTO cells right here.
Bipolar Lead-Acid (BPLA): Without getting into all of the details of the design, BPLA batteries (arriving soon) are touted as a big step-up from all other types of Lead-Acid batteries, in terms of cost, energy-density, power-density, longevity, and lifetime. Currently unavailable commercially, and with data available only down to -20C, we will see how they perform in our own vehicles this winter, and will rigorously document their performance in the Battery Lab down to -70C.
Product Development
Yes, you can lease them for up to ten years, reducing up-front cost. Leasing for more than five-years requires the installation of a battery-monitoring device (the “Battery Wizard”). Find out more about Battery Advancement Leasing.