In for a penny, in for a pound!

An old British phrase that has evolved to express someone's intention to complete a project once it has been undertaken, no matter how much time, effort, or money this entails.

And so it seems to be with our new house battery system for Igor. Once I decided to go with lithium batteries, I knew it was going to add up.

But, if you're going to do something, do it right!

The batteries arrived yesterday.

We bought two of these.

Each one came with it's own separate 10 amp charger. Normally, you buy the charger separately, and in fact I wasn't originally going to buy a charger at all given that Igor will have 200 watts of solar panels on the roof.

With these two batteries, we should have twice as much usable power as we had with the two AGM batteries that we had in Max. And under normal circumstances, the power supplied by the two batteries in Max was fine. But of course with solar panels, you need sunshine. And what if we encounter circumstances where we go a week or more without sunshine?

Charging and testing the new batteries.

So, besides charging the batteries with either solar or being plugged in to the grid, you can also charge the batteries while driving. But lithium batteries have unique charging parameters, so you can't just charge them off the alternator the way you can with the old standard lead acid batteries. You require a battery to battery DC charger (also called a DC to DC charger) which takes the power from the alternator, and adapts it as necessary to charge the lithium batteries.

Of course this costs more money.

I wasn't going to go this route, since I think these batteries will easily have enough power to supply our needs for at least four days. But, having the ability to charge them while driving would certainly help in some situations.

I saw a 40 amp unit on sale at Amazon.ca at a great price... "only" $130 plus tax. But it normally sells for about $250, so it's a fantastic deal. Of course there will be cables and stuff to buy as well. Here is the same unit at Amazon.com in the states. The sale price is actually cheaper in Canada than it is in the U.S., which rarely happens.

I ordered it.

But, then it will be done right. Oh well... in for a penny, in for a pound!