Lifepo deep discharge, what now?

Hi

After setting up my lithium battery (see previous posts) I put my car in storage in a underground parking lot (so no solar power).
When picking it up two months later my Victron 100Ah lithium battery reads 1.8V!

Now three questions:

  1. Is there any chance to revive this? It is/was brand new… I got a Victron IP 65 12/10 charger which has a lithium setting, can I directly attach it to the battery or should this be done by way of the BMS?

  2. How could this happen? All my devices are connected by way of a battery protect and a switch (which was off). Did just the monitoring/bluetooth of all the devices drain the battery?! I got a Orion XS, BMS, Smart Shunt, Battery Protect and Mppt solar charger hooked up to it…
    Or is defective? How can I „prove“ this to the seller?

  3. How can I prevent this? Thinking of adding a battery disconnect switch to the minus side of the Lifepo for when I put it in storage.

Thanks for any tips and tricks.

My monitoring system (RPi with Venus OS) consumes 5watts and if no solar would drain the battery in about 250hours.
To prevent this I remotely switch the power off if I know it will be in a location with no solar leaving only the router and the switch active which is less than one watt. The switch is a Sonoff 12v relay wired in the positive feed.
A manual switch would work as well but I’m a sucker for gadgets.

  1. The battery is most likely permanently damaged. Assuming this is a lithium Smart battery then Section 6.1.5 of the manual covers this including recovery. https://www.victronenergy.com/media/pg/Lithium_Battery_Smart/en/troubleshooting—support.html

  2. You say you have a Smart Battery Protect, to protect the battery you need 2 Smart Battery Protects, one for charging sources and one for loads as the SBP protect one way only, so if you only had one then that may not provide the required protection. When you say a switch, where was the switch. The manual gives some idea of battery life, what was the SOC when left. Was the BMS left on, was the SBP set up correctly. The battery should last for months if it truly was turned off.

  3. Disconnect the battery.

2 Likes
  1. I used the Victron battery charger and nurtured it back to life. Not sure how it keeps its charge.
  2. The switch is between the SBP and the BMS to manually disconnect it. This switch was off…
  3. I now since added a switch to disconnect the BMS, Orion, SBP, MPPT and Smart Shunt for when I put it in storage the next time. Hope this helps.

Just a bit disappointed that the BMS would drain its own battery?!