Reasons to fit Aceleron Essential LiFePO4 Lithium battery for your sailing boat or motor yacht

In 2022, more and more sailors and motor yacht owners are choosing to finally make the jump to a lithium battery bank for their on-board house batteries. However, there are many questions that are often asked and many areas that are not fully understood when deciding whether to change to lithium batteries, and then which batteries to choose and why. In this article, we discuss why it is so much of a benefit to fit lithium batteries in 2022, current cell technology and why it is so important to fit a high quality battery.

Lithium Batteries are much better than Lead Acid

Traditionally, sailing boats, motor yachts and campervans fitted lead acid batteries or AGM batteries for their house battery bank. At the time this was the best technology available and so was the accepted way to build up a large battery bank to run everything from lights navigation equipment, fridges and freezers.  

The house battery bank is generally separate from the engine starter battery as they need different types of cell chemistry for their different jobs, and the engine starter battery needs to be isolated and protected from the house bank so that starting the engine can always be achieved, no matter how low the house bank gets.

Lithium batteries using the latest cell technology

Nowadays, battery technology has improved hugely, with different battery technology coming onto the scene, and huge amounts of research and development has been carried out by the likes of Tesla.  This has meant that the chemistry within the cells of the lithium batteries has changed and improved, giving more and more capacity per cell, and longer and longer lifespan of each cell.

Lithium Battery with Greater Capacity

We may have heard of Lithium Ion batteries, which have been the most famous of the cell chemistry in the recent years, but now we are mostly using Lithium Iron Phosphate or LiFePO4 batteries. These have a huge benefit over Lithium batteries in that they can achieve many more duty cycles of full to empty before they begin to loose lose their capacity or suffer any damage at all. Additionally, whereas a lead acid battery can only be discharged to around 60% of its rated capacity in order to keep the battery healthy and undamaged, a LiFePO4 battery can be discharged all the way down to 10% without causing it any harm. Thus, a lead acid battery of 100Ah only has a useful range of 40Ah, whereas a lithium battery has a useful capacity of 90Ah.

Light Weight Lithium Batteries

Lithium batteries are much much lighter than their lead acid counterparts for a given capacity. This is because you are not carrying around many many plates of lead.  Typically lithium batteries will be half the weight of lead acid, and furthermore can be mounted in any orientation as their cells can operate any way up.  Therefore we can store our lithium batteries however we need to and don't need to worry about their orientation.

Buy lithium batteries with A-Grade cells inside

Not all cells are created equal.  A battery is made of a lot of smaller cells, all connected together to form a battery of a specific voltage and capacity rating. Each cell within the battery is made in a factory with differing quality levels. Each cell stores energy and each cell can be the 'weakest link' in that if one cell fails then the whole battery fails. 

The reason for this is that groups of cells are connected together in strings, with each string contributing to the total voltage output of the battery. If one cell fails then that string of cells is knocked out; this then dramatically reduces the output voltage of the battery.  The battery management system which monitors the battery will then notice this voltage drop, and cut-off the battery output. 

We can now see how important it is that we have the highest quality cells within our battery. Cell quality is ranked from A, through to D grade, with A-Grade cells being the best. Pro Marine Store is proud to be the only marine retailer of Aceleron Essential LiFePO4 lithium batteries. Aceleron's company philosophy is to build and make the best quality batteries available today and have cherry-picked only 4 manufacturers that are able to produce the highest grade of lithium cells, from a choice of many hundreds of manufacturers available today. 

By choosing to use only the highest grade premium cells available in the market today, Aceleron guarantee that their batteries will perform to the highest specifications, and certainly the highest available in the market today. Thus Aceleron only use A-Grade cells, giving the user the best performance onboard their soaking boat or motor yacht, with the longest life and the least chance of a cell failing.

Remote battery monitoring - we monitor your battery health

With a small add-on unit, Aceleron Essential Lithium batteries are remotely monitorable via the cloud. We can monitor down to the individual strings of cells within the battery and can inform you when something might not be quite right, or when a service might de due - just like your car does. 

We can diagnose problems remotely and can recommend solutions to keep your systems up and running. We can then organise the replacements to be sent to you or organise your batteries to be picked up and returned to you after the servicing is complete. Servicing a battery is massively cheaper than buying a new one, so you simply have nothing to loose, with the peace of mind knowing we are monitoring your batteries for you 24/7.

Lithium batteries and the circular economy.

It is accepted that batteries are sooner or later a consumable item - sooner or later they will loose their capacity and need to be changed. But in reality, the only part of the battery that is failing are the cells within. The housing, the terminals, the battery management circuitry and the internal wiring are all generally working perfectly. Now think of a car- when the clutch, tyres or cam belt needs replacing, we don't throw away the car, we just replace the parts needed. Up until now, batteries were just thrown away, but Aceleron has made a product where only the failed components can be replaced, thus giving you a brand new battery at a fraction of the cost of a fully new unit.

This same philosophy extends through Aceleron, with all areas of their products designed to be serviceable, so you only pay for what you need, and the battery doesn't end up in landfill.

Older cells going to remote villages and settlements around the world.

But what of the old cells? When old cells are removed and replaced, Aceleron refits these into a second line of batteries that offer a lower capacity, but also a drastically lower price point. These are typically sold in remote areas including Africa and to communities that don't have the budget for the premium new product, but can benefit hugely from off-grid power solutions to service their villages or schools for example.  Thus wastage due to the company is kept to an absolute minimum.

Blue water sailing boats and live aboard boats need durability and dependability. 

So when choosing a battery, especially in an environment where durability is critical, like a blue water sailing boat or a live aboard sailing boat, it is critical to choose the best quality components you can, in order to reduce the probability of failure and to guarantee the best battery capacity you can.

The Pro Marine Store philosophy is to recommend and sell the best kit in the industry. We are proud to be the launch retailer and consultancy for marine installations of Aceleron Essential Lithium batteries. We can offer our customers in intimate knowledge of these products, what they do and how to spec and fit them to your existing or new house battery banks.  

We stock the full range of Aceleron Essential LiFePO4 lithium batteries and offer free delivery to mainland UK addresses through UPS next day service. Talk to us today about what these batteries can do for your boat, how they will save you money and how you can help in reducing landfill, whilst also buying the best quality battery on the market.