Thread: 16 volt battery vs. 12v

If the charger you have now does not support Lithium batteries, you'll be buying a new charger anyway...Just saying. Wet battery style chargers will not work on Lithium batteries unless it is made to switch between them...

I dunno, Tom ... sounds a little like Li-Time was just trying to sell you a charger. My buddy and I have 12v NOCO chargers on our boats, and they will charge Lead Acid, AGM, and Lithium batteries at the same time. You just have to set each lead to the type of battery it's hooked up to.

I basically fell for the same deal when I bought my Eco-Worthy 50ah battery. I bought the charger, but I did not have a smart charger at the time. I used the EW 50ah battery to run my Livescope & 93sv unit and it lasted 6hrs before shutting off. I realized shortly thereafter that I had not charged the battery to full capacity. It was probably charged at somewhere around 75% & I was just reading the battery charger wrong. I really only expected the battery to run my setup for about 8hrs, as that's usually my avg. time fishing. I was calculating around a 5amp draw from the setup for 8hrs continuous pull (8x5=40) which would leave me 10ah overage for insurance.
I still don't know if it'll last that long, because I have a series 24 lead acid battery for the LS setup, and just carry the lithium 50ah battery as a backup.

The Eco-Worthy charger is a one lead 12V smart charger ... so it, too, could be used to charge LA, AGM, or Lithium batteries.

I've also noticed that since using a "smart charger", my batteries stay fully charged longer (when not in use) than they did back when I was charging them with the MK220.

16v is a myth. Doesn't help the picture one bit. 12v is plenty.

I should of added, I have a 10a 12v Norco charger and a loaned 17ah battery that works for close to 8 hrs, so I'm sure 50ah would work for maybe a weekend. The more I read the more I think the 16v batteries are just snake oil. Litime has Black Friday sales going on, I can get the 16v/70ah for $262 but would have to buy 16v 10a charger for $86 totaling $348 or stick with a 12v. A 12v65ah is on sale for $185 so I'm leaning hard toward staying with a 12v battery.

Originally Posted by tlefire

16v is a myth. Doesn't help the picture one bit. 12v is plenty.

True, 12v is fine if you use a large enough gauge wire, but I can fish all day long and my 16v battery on my 10" Garmin still shows 14.8v left.

I think that people were using 16V batteries (before LiFePo4 became popular) because they would sustain a higher voltage, especially with the improperly sized wires. With proper wiring size, even a 12V AGM can keep the voltage above 12.0V for longer periods of time, since dropping below 12V is the problem for a lot of electronics (even dropping below 12.5V is a problem for some car ECUs). Today's LiFePo4 batteries with proper wiring will definitely stay about 12.0V until the battery is just about dead.

The first component inside the electronics unit is a regulator that drops the voltage to something lower than the rated minimum operating voltage for the unit. That’s 10.8V for Humminbird units. The electronics inside the unit see the exact same voltage whether you supply it with 10.8V, 12.8V or 16V. At 16V, there will be a little more power consumption due to the regulator have to make a bigger change.

If your wiring is so bad it can’t supply 10.8V to the unit, you need to fix it rather than trying to cover for it with a higher battery voltage.

You need to be extremely careful that your electronics can handle the higher charging voltage for the 16V battery. That’s going to be about 18V, well higher than the maximum voltage a Lowrance unit can handle and probably higher than other electronics can handle.

Stick with a standard nominal 12V battery.

16v = snake oil. I can run three HDS 12, a HDS 16, AT 2 and my turret all day on my 105ah Impulse Lithium and still have 13.3v and 42% charge.