Charging & Inverters

A LiFePO4 battery charges differently from the lead-acid battery it replaces. It wants a constant-current stage followed by a short absorption at a lithium-appropriate voltage, it has no use for a float or equalization stage, and it must not be charged below freezing. Most charging problems come from equipment that still assumes lead-acid behaviour, so these guides begin with what a suitable charger looks like, which settings on a multi-chemistry charger to pick and when an existing charger can safely stay in service.

Charging on the move gets its own treatment: alternator charging through a DC-DC converter, solar controllers, shore-power converters in an RV and the Victron equipment many owners standardise on. Each guide explains the limits that matter, such as how much current an alternator can supply continuously and why a converter between it and a lithium bank protects both.

The inverter guides cover the other direction: how long a battery of a given size will run an inverter load, what size inverter a battery can support, why surge current matters and why a battery sometimes shuts down the moment an inverter is connected. Together they let you build a charging and discharging setup that the battery's management system will never need to interrupt.