Deep Cycle House Batteries

2 Volt fork lift batteries

They are the best !!!

These type of batteries are the absolut best type of deep cycle house batteries for marine type use. They come in many sizes, are maintenance free, can be mounted vertically and horizontally (very usefull for the larger versions) and do not need ventilated space. They last for 10 to 15 years and work perfectly with inverters. But they are not cheap and they are no toys and should be installed by professionals.

I have used them for years in my different sailboats and in our commercial ships (SOLAS). We are very happy with them. On my current larger sail boat with its mild hybrid setup, I have a very large house battery bank of 2 x 24 Volt, 2700 Ah, concisting of 24, 2 Volt Batteries, 168 kg each. They are standing in the keel and below the waterline, acting also as "intelligent" ballast of almost 5.000 kg including wiring and mounting.

Look at the US homepage of Mastervolt. They show an excellent matrix of what type of battery is best for its purpose. Also the matrix is used for directing the customer towards their Lio batteries, it shows clearly the qualities of this type of 2 Volt traction battery for marine use.

This is one of the reasons, the Navy is using them for their Subs. Unless weight is a major concern, do not go for Lio batteries. Much more expensive and very dangerous when mistreated.

Mastervolt is not the only provider of this type of battery. I only picked them as an example.

Below examples of the 280 Ah and 2700 Ah variants of this type of battery. The pictures are out of scale. The 2700 Ah is much higher than the 280 Ah (15,7 inches versus 32,1 inches).

I can attest that I've seen many boats with 7-10 year old Mastervolts that are still functioning fine.

2 Volt fork lift batteries

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They are the best !!!

We use them on our house 24 volt to inverters 8 years no problems
24x 2 v in parallel & series.
And we use them hard or all 110 & 220 inverted power

I would like to suggest: Trojan L16H-AC's combined with a Flow-Rite Pro-Fill Battery Watering System

+ 1 from my side !

My batteries in the sail boat and the commercial ones are genuine EXIDE batteries also. To my knowledge, Mastervolt does not produce anything. They are only a dutch trading company, that just places their label on these products. Mastervolt has such an effective marketing, that one could believe, Mastervolt is the biggest producer of electrical yacht equipment in Europe. They are NOT !!

On some components like inverters, chargers and isolation transformers, there are IMO other companies (producer !) on the market with much better performance, quality and durability, like Victron Energy for example.

I only named Mastervolt as an example because of their easy to use homepage.

"Not every dealer is Dutch, but every Dutch is a dealer"

Also don't forget that the charging system has to fit your particular battery chemistry and type.
Making your battery up from very nice 2V industrial cells won't increase performance at all if the charger does not fit. Don't forget that you may have multiple charging systems (AC, integrated into an inverter, alternators on the engine, ...) on your yacht.

Two advantages of single cell batteries not mentioned so far:
You can put some distance between cells. Not greatest idea since it means permanent additional losses but it may get you around space restrictions.
You can replace singe cells instead the whole thing.

PS: 4 tons batteries alone, that's quite a bit of multi purpose lead.