Why we went with a Renogy Lithium Battery in our camper
The 12V lithium battery market has exploded beyond belief. You have batteries that start off at $400, and work their way into the thousands, with more information and sales pitches going on than you can poke a stick at.
Despite this, we’ve purchased two 170aH Renogy Lithium batteries, and installed them in our Hybrid Camper. In this post, we cover why we went with Renogy, and do so purely so you can see our perspective.
We are not associated with Renogy gear, and this post is not to encourage you to go out and to convert to lithium, or to buy Renogy gear; its purely our experience.
We are not like other travelling families who love to push certain products, and receive commissions from doing so. We paid for our batteries with our own money, and will never sell our souls to make a dollar. If you want Renogy batteries after reading this, go for it. If you don’t, that’s perfectly fine too.
We haven’t had these Renogy Lithium Batteries for too long, and will be doing a thorough, long term review once we’ve had them, and punished them for a year or more. If they fall short of the mark, we’ll be sure to let you know about it in a future post.
This post is purely to discuss why we went with Renogy, and not something else.
Why the Renogy Lithium Batteries?
Reputable brand name
I stopped buying no name gear a long time ago, unless its for something trivial that I really don’t need to live with. We’ve been bitten too many times buying cheap, unbranded gear.
These days, we try and buy somewhere in the middle, in the hope that it is decent quality without paying a huge price for it. Again, we’ve been bitten by this strategy too, so it doesn’t always work!
Renogy is a massive business that sells products worldwide, and Australia seems to be quite undersold, although I see a lot more people recommending Renogy these days, so maybe that is changing.
Renogy have a reputation for being hard to get a hold of for any warranty issues, but they have been flawless so far with all of our dealings, and I’ve spoken to a few people who have dealt with them and never had any issues.
If that changes, and we have any bad experiences with them, you’ll know about it.
Extremely good pricing
I started shopping for 12V lithium batteries months ago. I made a brief list of different battery suppliers, prices, dimensions, warranties and so on. When you are paying thousands of dollars for batteries, it pays to be confident in your purchase!
As it so happens, I had an ad come up for a Renogy sale around Boxing Day, and I was very impressed with the pricing that they were offering on all of their gear, so we picked up two 170aH batteries, a 60 amp MPPT solar charger, 3000W inverter and 600W of solar panels, all delivered to our door in Perth for about $3200.
If you know your pricing for this sort of gear, you’d appreciate this is a great price, and we did save a fairly significant amount on the boxing day sales, but I’ve seen a lot of different sales pop up since too.
We’ve actually just put an order in for more Renogy gear for the Dmax, so will be able to give you a thorough review on a huge number of their products soon!
The physical dimensions are brilliant
The biggest reason for going to the Renogy lithium batteries was their physical size. Our camper had two 120aH AGM batteries in place, but some seriously limited space issues and without relocating water pumps, DCDC chargers and other bits and pieces I could see we’d struggle to find anything that would fit well.
I wanted more than 200aH of lithium, as the 120aH usable AGM capacity wasn’t enough to cover for cloudy days, and 160aH usable (from a 200aH lithium) wasn’t much of an improvement.
I looked at slim line batteries, 200 amp hour lithium batteries, 150 amp hour batteries, and even looked at putting 3 of the Itech 120X’s in (I’m glad we didn’t!). It all would have required modifications, and they’d be annoying, fiddly and frustrating.
The Renogy 170aH lithium batteries are almost the same size as a 120aH AGM, except they are about 70mm taller, which was absolutely perfect.
I literally removed the AGM batteries, cleaned the area, put some Linatex rubber down and then dropped the new lithium batteries in place, running in the opposite direction without having to move a thing.
It meant we got 340aH of lithium batteries to fit (272aH usable, or 2.3x the previous AGM setup) without doing any major work, which was brilliant.
As it turned out, we managed to fit our 3000W inverter and 60 amp MPPT solar regulator in place, under the hatch too, along with the batteries and didn’t lose any more usable space. I was absolutely stoked at how well it worked out, and it comes from spending a bit of time working out what is going to suit.
Recommended by our auto electrician
We’ve been using Stephen from Hunter Autoelectrics for a number of years now, and he always does a good job. He’s been supplying and recommending Renogy lithium batteries for some time now, despite installing all kinds of battery systems – Enerdrive, DCS, Allspark, Itech and the list goes on.
In his opinion, Renogy seem to be the perfect middle ground between quality, price and performance, and I’m happy to take his word for it.
Support the blog
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Cell types
Lithium batteries generally come in 3 types of cells. Prismatic (rectangular blocks), Cylindrical (small cylinders) and Pouch cells (small pockets of cells).
For camping and 4WDing Prismatic seems to be the most common, and they have a good reputation for tolerance to harsh conditions.
Interestingly, the 100aH Renogy lithium batteries are pouch cells, and the 170aH lithium batteries are cylindrical.
I did a fair bit of reading on the 3 different types, and wasn’t able to come to a firm conclusion, so we’ll test it out for ourselves. In our Dmax, we have 4 prismatic cells that we are putting together to build a DIY lithium battery, and you’ll hear more about that later on.
Full, long term review to come
As mentioned, we aren’t attached to Renogy, or in any business to promote them. We’ll be doing a full review in 6 – 12 months, once we’ve used them long term.
At this stage, they’ve done about 15 days off grid and been hammered with our induction cooktop, and done really well. When we know more, you will too!
EDIT – we’ve done the Renogy Lithium Battery Review, which we’re happy to share with you.
Hey mate,
The review is scheduled, but I want to use them for a bit longer before we say anything.
As it stands though, they’ve done about 21,000 amp hours, or about 300kwH or use, which isn’t insignificant. We’ve had zero issues, and the camper has been taken on some really rough tracks.
We are using them full time, to run our freezer, lights, water pump and the induction cooktop at least two or three times a day.
So far, no con’s at all
All the best
Aaron
Hey Aaron,
Might be a good time to write that update? Keen to hear the pros and cons…
Hey Graham,
You’ve got a mean setup there, and sounds like its been well thought out and installed.
We are quietly really impressed with the Renogy gear as well, and expect it to become very popular in the coming years in Australia.
I’ve seen their Renogy 1 system, and would love to see some more support over here, but maybe it will come as they expand
Cheers for sharing your experiences
All the best
Aaron
Our Van is the second in which we have used Renogy equipment. Our new van has 3x 200a/h batteries, 2 X 60A solar controllers, 3000w inverter, 60A dcdc charger, Bluetooth monitoring hub as well as the shunt and remote monitoring screen. The only non Renogy item we installed is a Victron, 30A 240v smart charger as the Renogy one is too small…. The panels are 2x 200w Renogy flexible panels, 2 Sunman 100w flexible panels and a Sunman 430w flexible panel… This is a sizable system and allows to enormous discharge currents for aircondioners, induction cook tops, toasters etc. I have thermostatically controlled ventilation fans built into all cupboard enclosures where this gear is mounted and big cabling to cut losses.
I have no hesitation recommending Renogy gear. While Victron equipment is very nice… I just flat out can’t afford it….. Renogy is indeed in a sweet spot…. Only thing missing from the Renogy line up is an up market screen display for observing system operation….. however the Renogy 1 system is coming soon to fix this….
Hey Stalka,
Good to hear! We are leaving tomorrow for the big lap, so the Renogy gear is going to cop a good work out!
All the best
Aaron
I did a bit of testing with these regulators having read that lithium really needs mppt to get maximum absorption even though the pwm 30 amp wanderer claims to charge Li – I connected both renogy regulators to the same battery bank and they were working well together – I was amazed at this and will be sure to revisit your forum in a couple of years for an update on how the renogy gear is holding up Aaron – happy travelling from the NSW southern highlands
Hey Stalka,
Cheers for the comment. I’m seeing a lot more people purchase Renogy products, and they seem to be a great balance between price and quality. Time will tell, but hearing good stories from people like yourself is always appreciated
Take care
Aaron
I also have 4 regulators from renogy and they all do a great job charging batteries – 40 amp rover regulator charges 8000 kWh lithium batteries to full and has been getting stronger absorption each day and my 3 wanderer 30 amp regulators also charge flawlessly other then switching off from overcharging at times which can be annoying but protecting my investment is fine and I’m sure if I had a larger agm bank it would not overcharge so easily – 2 x 560 amp agm banks is not small but compared to my lithium it is and the bt1 Bluetooth works just fine – shows exactly what’s on the regulator and I haven’t yet seen a renogy review with a fail such as catch on fire or explode like epever the so called best reg on the market
Hey Steve,
Good to hear you’ve had a great run so far; can’t get much better than that! I’m keen to see how our 170aH’s go, with the cylindrical cells
All the best
Aaron
Just over 2 years using one of their 100AH LiFePO4 batteries (pouch cells) in our 4wd. Faultless over about 30000km of varying roads, including lots of corrugations. Faultless to date.
Hey Andrew,
Good to hear you’ve been happy with them. Hopefully they continue to sell a good product at a decent price!
Take care
Aaron
Hi all I’ve been running renogy batteries inverters and solar panels for a few years now, I find there tech department great if not a little slow to respond and after a 20 amp lithium 240 to 12 volt charger was dead on arrival they replaced it no problems, so far very happy with there gear regards Andy..
Hey Kezza,
Good to hear! They run the pouch cells, which are slightly different to our cylindrical ones, but obviously good gear. I’ve got no intention of swapping to full 240V wiring (we’ll just run off extension cords) but interesting point about the RCD protection.
Take care
Aaron
Hi
I’ve been running 2x 100ah on a 2000w enerdrive inverter for over 2 years. Have had no issues. I started with a renogy 2000w inverter that was also great bit changed to enerdrive with built in rcd protection for the can.
Hey Charles,
The review Will does is on the 100aH unit, which runs pouch cells. Interesting that the 170aH units that we purchased run the cylindrical cells.
I’d be dubious about Renogy not having to comply with Australian law. I would assume the moment you sell something in Australia you have to comply, and have to warrant it, but I’m not a lawyer!
If we have issues, I’ll be sure to post about them here
All the best
Aaron
I’ve been tempted with Renogy, mainly because of the thumbs up from Will Prowse, however I did find out something that put me off. Because Renogy don’t carry out business in Australia (they don’t have an ABN) they have no obligation to comply with Australian consumer law, so no recourse, warranty or otherwise. If one of their products failed catastrophically they wouldn’t even have to undertake a recall.