Expanding an Inergy Apex with a non-Inergy battery?

[OnlyBackRoads]

I have an Apex portable power station made by Inergy. Purchased several years ago, mostly because of the physical size (fits where I need it to fit) and ability to add additional storage with lead-acid batteries.

I would like to add a better quality (non lead-acid) supplemental external battery. Has anyone piggybacked a LiFePO4 to one of these Apex units, and have you have any problems? Anything special needed to do other than make sure that the starting voltages are the same and between 10.4 and 10.6 volts as per the Apex manual?

Inergy states that that ONLY their lithium batteries should be connected, and are absolutely no help in supplying information about anything else. My problem is that I don’t want to buy any more from them. Too expensive, poorly engineered, constantly out of stock, and zero customer support.

Suggestions? I really want to increase battery capacity with an external battery, safely and effectively. Can I put in a standard 12 volt LiFePo4? And brand suggestions?

Thanks.

 

[Crowz]

Yep if you can come up with a plug to fit the thing you can connect a battery to it. Since its just a 12volt agm battery that they offer as an expansion I can't see how it would be hard to rig up a lifepo4 12v for the same purpose.

 

[DIYrich]

Find out how to connect their lifepo4 battery. The trick is getting the right charge settings for the battery.