question

@wally01

It largely depends on if the 12V lithium batteries you choose can be connected like that and the kinds of loads you are running. For example with battle born you have to tell them when you order them that that is the config you are wanting to do, then they match up battery bms or series.

And yes the 48V system does work with the balancers. Infact it is recommended. I have done a setup like that it worked ok. There were a few tweaks for reliability. Sometimes solar overshoot when a big load droppped off at 100% SOC caused the bms to shut down. But you can work around that with voltage tweaking. I have seen also a few bms blown in one 12v from this kind of setup.

When building a bank that is really is just easier and more reliable to get 48V batteries when using lithium.

@wally01 It really depends where you will be installing the batteries as some 48V units are typically best suited to domestic installs given their different shapes and warranty terms of use. Victron Lithium Smart can max have 5 batteries parallel and 4 in series to e.g. with 300Ah batteries give a max of 1500Ah. Of course with greater DOD you can opt for a smaller bank. Modern LifePO4 batteries typically all have integral cell balancing and monitoring so even having balancers will be lost on me.

Thanks for the replies so far. Alexandra, your comment of the single BMS blowing up in this type of battery bank is the type of things I am looking for.

I have seen a number of different batteries that mention all types of restrictions on number of batteries that can be run in series and parallel.

I mainly was looking at the 12v battery option as I have the system set up with large cables and balancing, but if the 48v batteries will be more reliable long term then that’s what I will go with.