Firstly, I would like to congratulate Mike Attree on doing what a lot of people would like to do. However, I would point out that there is a lot of energy in a lithium LiFePO4 battery system – nearly twice as much useable as a similar-sized lead-acid battery system – and doing what he has done takes a lot of technical knowledge and skill. I also note that his electrical needs are a lot lighter than some.
For the average PBO reader, I’d urge caution in trying to do what Mike has done. If something goes wrong then it goes wrong quickly and catastrophically. I was unable to find any stories of thermal lithium runaway on the type of boats that we own, there are however quite a few about fires being caused by recharging scooters and the like on board, although that is a slightly different matter.
The lithium-ion hardware offerings by big manufacturers have come on in leaps and bounds since Mike designed and built his system and decent metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistor (MOSFET) controlledswitches to control the system.
