Battle Born Lithium Batteries featured in Trailer Life Magazine

A few months ago, Chris Dougherty at Trailer Life Magazine reached out to us.  He invited Battle Born Batteries to do a project with Xantrex on Trailer Life Magazine’s in-house towable unit.  The project involved the installation of the new Xantrex XC2000 inverter charger and two of our Battle Born BBGC2 100 Ah lithium batteries. All our batteries are the only drop in replacement for a 6-volt lead acid battery in the market.

The new Xantrex Freedom XC family includes two inverter chargers:

• XC2000 – 2000-watt inverter charger with 80-amp charger
• XC1000 – 1000-watt inverter charger with 50-amp charger

The Trailer Life Magazine article “Quest for Power” covers all the items needed to complete an upgrade like this.  We fully tested the Xantrex XC2000 here in-house without batteries.  This unit has been designed with all the features and flexibility that you need.  Some of the key features that we really liked are:

• Fully programmable from the unit itself, no remote required.
• Built in display on the unit
• Easy DC and AC connections
• Reverse Polarity protection
• Converter and Inverter in one
• Wide DC input range
• Programmable AC Under-Voltage Shutdown
• Smarter Power Factor Corrected Charging
• Power Share

The XC2000 accommodates all the standard features you expect to find on a pure sine invert charger and many more.  We really enjoyed the fully programmable charging algorithm and the DC disconnect.

You might also be wondering about a few of these features.  To elaborate, let’s start with the most interesting one, it’s a converter and inverter all in one? That is correct. This unit is an inverter charger, but it’s a bit different than a standard inverter charger. The XC2000 can pick up a battery at 0 Vdc, which is uncommon amongst all other inverter chargers on the market.

Xantrex really hit the mark on the XC2000, in comparison to other inverter chargers, there’s a common problem among that causes inverter chargers to have a problem below 5-8 volts. The inverter chargers with this issue cannot see a battery, so they won’t charge the bank. However, the Xantrex XC2000 unit will start charging at any voltage, which means it’s great for lithium deep cycle batteries like ours.  If you run the batteries low the implemented BMS will shut the battery off.  Eventually, this will drop the voltage below 5-volts, while most inverter chargers will not charge batteries until a 12-volt source is applied.  This new Xantrex XC2000 works perfectly when accompanied by Battle Born Batteries.  Lastly, by having dead battery charging down to 0 Vdc, it really hits the unit home.

Next, you are probably wondering about the reverse polarity protection.  While lots of inverters have tried to incorporate this feature, the new XC2000 has it already built in.  Ultimately, we really wanted to see how it worked, so after conversing with our friends at Xantrex, we tested it.  Not only did it work, it worked better than we thought. The fuses did not blow until the 4^th time we connected a battery backwards, which we were pleasantly surprised with.  Generally, a reverse polarity means a death sentence for most inverters, but once again Xantrex raised the bar. Here is a link to a video from Xantrex covering some of the other features within the unit.

Conclusively, we truly had a great time working on this project. We have provided a link to the full article on their site here. For more great articles from writers like Dougherty, please like this and subscribe to Trailer Life Magazine today!

Here are links to other Trailer Life Magazine’s platforms: Facebook & YouTube.

We have provided all the settings on the XC2000 for the trailer life build. Here is the list of changes we made here at Battle Born Batteries:

1) Inverter Ignition Control (for a towable off is good, this is the default setting.)

2) LBCO Voltage ‘default 10.5’ –  11.5 is good here, to keep the BMS from shutting down.

3) LBCO Shutdown Delay Timer – Default 300 seconds.

4) LBCO Recovery Voltage – Default is 13.1, up to 13.4 is good too.

5) Power Save Time.

6) Power Save (Load Sensing) Mode – Same as above.

7) Output Frequency default is good.

8) Output Voltage default is good.

9) Inverter Output Power Limit (Freedom XC 1000) Default is good for both of these.

10) Inverter Output Power Limit Timer.

11) Transfer Mode – Default is good.

12) Utility AC Under Voltage Level 90 volts is great especially when running a generator.  Leave this at default.

13) Inverter Shutdown Recovery – Default is manual, I feel like this should be switched to auto once you have everything installed and working.

14) Audible Alarm – Leave this on at Default.

20) Battery Type – we will use custom.

21) Battery Temperature – we will use custom.

22) Custom Absorption Voltage 14.4 V.

23) Custom Float Voltage 13.4 V.

24) Charger Current (Freedom XC 2000) leave at default 100% if you are using more than 160 amps of lithium.

26) Charger Ignition Control – for towable this is off, its fine at default.

27) Equalize Charging for Flooded Battery – Off is default, don’t use it for lithium.

28) AC Input Breaker for Load Share.

99) Reset all settings to their default values.

NOTE: There is no 15-19 setting, as well as no 25 setting.

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