
18/04/2025
What to do when your ageing (10 years) 28kWh 48volt AGM (Lead)Battery starts to show its age (voltage drops)? Lithium batteries have come down hugely in price and are now the obvious choice, they are compact and can be fully charged and discharged whereas lead will prematurely degrade if you go below half. Our lithium battery started life as a 400 Volts Peugeot 208e, modified beautifully by Andreas to work with 48 volts. Problem is, mixing battery chemistries and age is not possible unless you rig something like we show on this post with the small but more powerful lithium battery charging the lead battery via a dedicated old Studer inverter we had from an old project and a second hand but great quality 30 amp charger. It's a little complicated and inefficient with all the conversions DC-AC-DC but after a few tests with smaller chargers now works well and is a viable solution for other older battery upgrades.