[RE-wrenches] LFP storage

[Starlight]

Hello Jay,

We have been in the Li-ion battery business for 13 years. I can share our experience with our LiFeBlue brand and also with GBS cells. 

In our shop we have LFP test cells that have been sitting disconnected for over 7 years. Each time we test these, the capacity loss is negligible. Some are stored at 50%, some at 100% SoC. There are other factors I wont get into but the longevity is remarkable.

Our recommend storage method for periods over 30 days is to establish about a 50% SoC (about 13.2V) and disconnect the battery. Make sure it’s full disconnected as a small load can drain over 4kWh per month. When ready for use, recharge fully for cell balancing and to calibrate the internal SoC meter.

Some customers use batteries in a UPS configuration for radio systems backup. The voltage is fixed at 14.2V. The cells are only discharged during a power outage. Some of these systems are over a decade old.

Our RV and Marine batteries are often left on float charge of 13.8V while being stored for many months. The downside of this is if the charger malfunctions you might over-discharge the battery. This could be difficult to recover if left in a full discharge state. 

If you’re going to disconnect the battery, be sure to check it occasionally as some batteries have a high self discharge rate. Our brand has a hibernate mode after 15 days of non use. Current drops to 5uA.

Let me know if I covered it all. 

Thank you,

Larry Crutcher
Starlight Power Systems






On Jan 2, 2026, at 12:31 PM, Jay via RE-wrenches <re-wrenches at lists.re-wrenches.org> wrote:

Hi all

I’m wondering what the consensus is on storing LFP battereis like for a lightly used RV. 
A customer was asking me and I just don’t have a solid answer. 

Some companies say drain to 50%
Others say it’s ok to charge to full, just don’t keep them on a charger. 

For example if you have a lightly used stand alone system that’s full every day for many hours, it would seem that’s just like charging up to full but keeping it in float. 

Thanks in advance 

Jay



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