# Braille Lithium Battery Review- Stay Away From Them



## new2theflats (Jul 31, 2019)

Shortly after picking up my 2021 EVO I switched out the heavy lead acid cranking battery for a lightweight lithium cranking battery. It worked flawlessly for the season, the 115 PROXS liking it just fine. At the end of the winter of 2020/21 we put the boat in storage and headed home to Alaska with the intent of coming back to Louisiana in the fall of 2021.

Then hurricane IDA hit leaving thousands homeless. We had an apartment already leased but after hearing that hundreds of families were calling the apartment complex we decided to give up our lease and stay in Alaska so a family without a home could take our apartment.

Fast forward to now and we are back in Louisiana something like a year and a half later. Pulled the boat out of storage and the 24v lithium and 12v lithium batteries were both stone dead. Hooked up a lithium charger and the 24v came back to life, but not the 12v.

I called Braille Batteries expecting to hear what steps I needed to bring it back to life. To paraphrase "We don't use those cheap Chinese low voltage/high voltage protection circuits because they fail too often. So if the battery has less than 10 volts you are out of luck." And so I was.

I'd been excited to purchase a lithium battery made here in the USA. Shame on me for assuming that any lithium battery company in business today, especially an American company, would all have low voltage/high voltage protection circuits built in.

My only quick solution was to pick up a lead acid cranking battery. I will eventually replace it with another lithium but it won't be from Braille. And I will confirm this time that it has built in low voltage/high voltage protection circuits.

I've been using lithium batteries in air planes and boats for at least ten years now with no issues whatsoever until Braille.

Caveat emptor.


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## RaspberryPatch (Dec 17, 2016)

LFP and in fact most batteries (lead, nimh, nicd, lithium) will self discharge at the cell level, and no BMS with protection will stop this. If you leave it long enough, the battery will be dead and not recover. For a consumer lithium battery 18 month has from a full state of charge can be a problem at 25C and definitely a problem at higher temperatures. 

There is a reason, LFP OEMs state recharge every 6 months.

The problem with most of the batteries I see promoted for marine is poor cell binning, which makes them all vulnerable to long storage.

As far as laptop, they are very well made by companies like CATL, Samsung and the thinfilm control are orders of magnitude better. 

I have no commercial interests here.


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## RaspberryPatch (Dec 17, 2016)

My batteries when stored, are recharged every 4 months - including lead, nmc, lmp and lfp,


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## Smackdaddy53 (Dec 31, 2012)

You should have had the batteries on a trickle charger.


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## new2theflats (Jul 31, 2019)

In hindsight I would have hooked one up had I known we’d be gone that long. Even so it should have been able to be recovered like the 24v did. Yea maybe it won’t have the life it used to, next week will give me the answer as we get the boat on the water again.


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## Smackdaddy53 (Dec 31, 2012)

Most of these lithiums can be revived but you have to go r e d n e c k and Raspberry Patch will probably have a heart attack BUT…if they drop below a certain voltage the computer will not allow it to accept a charge. You can take a freshly charged battery and connect jumpers to the lithium and it will trick the computer into allowing it to accept a charge if you are quick enough. I’ve done it a few times on a few dead lithiums with no issues.


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## new2theflats (Jul 31, 2019)

Shhhhh. Yea that’s my next step now that I’ve got a new battery. I miss the days when you could take the battery charger clips and make sparks. Lawyers! Grrrrr.


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## RaspberryPatch (Dec 17, 2016)

Aside lead battery trickle charges reduces lithium cyclic life, unless the BMS has a micro-cycling routine (not all do). Otherwise, if you did use a trickle charger, put it on a simple timer, idea would be a couple hours a week, but 1 hour every day would be better than always on.

Now this timer idea is bad for most lead, as most lead do not like mechanism ( micro-cycling).


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## Team Geezer (6 mo ago)

I have Ionic Lithium for both my cranking battery and my TM. Luckily I've never had your problem. I did research this potential situation before switching over and found this same solution from several sources. It might be worth a try. It follows the same recommendations given by Smackdaddy53.

Reviving a Dead LiFePO4 Battery


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## Jason M (Aug 13, 2017)

Team Geezer said:


> I have Ionic Lithium for both my cranking battery and my TM. Luckily I've never had your problem. I did research this potential situation before switching over and found this same solution from several sources. It might be worth a try. It follows the same recommendations given by Smackdaddy53.
> 
> Reviving a Dead LiFePO4 Battery


Solid find there


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## SS06 (Apr 6, 2021)

So after all these ideas and advice....was the Braille battery the issue, or your lack of maintenance?


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## finbully (Jan 26, 2013)

new2theflats said:


> Shortly after picking up my 2021 EVO I switched out the heavy lead acid cranking battery for a lightweight lithium cranking battery. It worked flawlessly for the season, the 115 PROXS liking it just fine. At the end of the winter of 2020/21 we put the boat in storage and headed home to Alaska with the intent of coming back to Louisiana in the fall of 2021.
> 
> Then hurricane IDA hit leaving thousands homeless. We had an apartment already leased but after hearing that hundreds of families were calling the apartment complex we decided to give up our lease and stay in Alaska so a family without a home could take our apartment.
> 
> ...


Are you saying you kept the batteries off any charger/maintainer for 1.5 years? If so, lucky you got one to take a charge!


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## POCtied (Oct 19, 2016)

When you go "redcreative" with it, don't be standing too close. When they boom, its not as cool as you might imagine.
NOCO chargers are only about $50 bucks....


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