Full River Batteries

Welcome Waiolai,
I'm not familiar with Full River batteries but a quick google leads me to believe they are AGM's and fairly expensive, your bank costing in the order of $2,500 - $3,000?

It is clear why you'd be pissed if they've packed up after 2 years, issues within 1 year. I'd be curious as the the retailers grounds for refusing warranty?

To answer your question of what to replace them with, we'd need to know how you use them? Occasional use, live aboard, extended cruising, charging sources and types of load.

There are many, many options with batteries. Some observations I have learnt the hard way:

1) Buy from a well known high volume retailer. I had some standard FLA's purchased from Burnsco, they were loosing capacity so I took them back, they sent them to Hella Endurant who load tested them, just inside the 2 year warranty period, Hella reckoned they were within spec - just, but Burnsco told them to not fuck me around and I got a new set on warranty. (I have an account with Burnsco and it is in the retailers interestes to keep the punter happy, not their supplier)
2) I am of the view to buy the lowest cost batteries practical, and just plan to replace them every couple of years (5 minimum, 10 ideal). The basic cost / risk equation is lower. Unless of course you are doing a round the world voyage via the poles and need absolutely bombproof batteries - my situation is Gulf Cruising. They must be adequately spec'ed / big enough though.

Now - why have they packed up?
Many battery suppliers have in the fine print the need for continuous battery monitoring to claim a warranty. Do this. You can get a reliable battery monitor from AliExpress for small change. I have one and it works great. You can also get top of the line battery monitors from Victron for maybe $250, including Bluetooth enabled so you can watch everything on your phone, and you can data log them. Very cheap insurance if you are going to cough up another $3k for batteries.

Professional Install you say?
The leading cause of battery failure is the operator killing them. This is true maybe 95% of the time. If I were you, I'd check and confirm all the charging parameters used against the required parameters for those batteries. If there is a discrepancy you may have a case to claim against the installer. That aside, have you raised your dead batteries with the installer?

Related to this, the correct charge and discharge parameters, having a battery monitor will tell you if and what in your system is harming your batteries. Using a battery monitor will tell you the issue in the first week, so you don't have to wait 12 months for your batteries to die to work out something like a charge voltage is set too high - a simple change of a field in a charge controller and you can save $3k in dead batteries. The first thing I would check is the charge current - AGM's can't accept very high charge current. They are also prone to over charging from solar systems. This dries out the gel part of the AGM and the batteries die.

Quick anecdote:
I replaced my FLA's with Kijo Lead Carbons. They are going really well so far (as per my battery monitor), but only a year old. $900 for 300 A/hrs. This is about the same price as a cheapish AGM, but they claim to have partial state of charge tolerance, and higher charge and discharge capacity - so should last longer. If they don't, they only cost me the same amount as basic AGM's, so I'm not risking anything but have loads of upside.

Anyway, A mate recently purchased a moonbeams expensive 55fter with a brand new Lead Carbon battery bank. On the handover it was explained that two of the 4 Remco Lead Carbon's failed early on and were replaced under warranty. I was very interested in that this big professionally maintained boat went for Lead Carbons also. Accept they went for the more expensive Remco brand - and still had warranty issues. So, the lesson is either or both of get the cheapest batteries available to reduce total cost risk, AND get a battery monitor so you can identify charging or parameter issues before the batteries die, AND use the battery monitor / data logging so that the supplier cannot weasel out of a warranty claim.

That is a very impressive set up I must say.
Two topics to talk about, what killed the batteries and the warranty.

The Warranty. If you have had your setup validated by 2 marine electrical types AND you already have a battery monitor this really adds to your case for a warranty claim. The supplier saying it is unlikely all 4 batts would die due to faults is drawing a long bow. The fact of the matter is they have died, and you have reasonable evidence it wasn't abuse. I don't really know what to do if a retailer / supplier denies a warranty claim, others on here might have better ideas about the Consumer Guarantees Act or small claims stuff - that is not my area.

What killed the batteries?
You have epic amounts of charging and very little use. It is highly unlikely you have put the batts through very many cycles at all, so use hasn't killed them. My big suspicion is over-charging.
Do you leave the fridge and freezer on when away from the boat? you certainly have enough charging capacity to do that.
Here is the thing with over charging. All solar controllers give the batteries the full charge current at the start of every day. The ePever Tracer MPPT controllers give the bulk charge voltage for 2 or 3 hours (I can't remember which) and this starts every day when the sun comes up. There is no way for the MPPT controller to tell if the batts are fully charged. If they are, your solar will be giving these AGM's a solids 50 amps for a couple of hours, regardless of if they need it.
The victron controllers do the same, but are a bit more sophisticated. They check the resting voltage of the batteries at sun up and reduce the bulk charge time proportionally. It is not ideal, but loads better than the ePever Tracer's. I'm not familiar with wind generators, but if that is giving charge as well, it adds to the risk your batts are being over-charged when you aren't using the boat.

The Balmar smart regulators only give 36minutes bulk charge before checking the battery voltage every 6 minutes and reducing to the float charge when the battery set-voltage is achieved. So motoring is unlikely to cause chronic over-charging.

In the absence of any other faults / issues, and given you have had two marine electrical guys check the system, the best I can think of (from the confines of the internet) is risk of over charging. On my boat, to get around this I have ditched the large solar panels and just use a 20w panel to give a float charge when I'm not on the boat. That balances parasitic loads nicely and can't produce enough current to over-charge a battery if I wanted to.
And the whole thing with overcharging AGM's is you can't see any damage until it is too late. With flooded lead acid, you can see you are loosing liquid and need to top up all the time with water. This is what was happening with my FLA's before I changed them. AGM's are sensitive to over charging because of the fancy gel / electrolyte stuff in the absorbed glass mats. It can dry out easily, and there is no way to physically see it.

As for what to do about new batteries. 500Ah sounds like an extraordinary amount of capacity for the type of cruising you describe. Technically, if you use 80ah in a day / over night, you could have 160Ah of battery capacity and not go below 50% depth of discharge. Round that up to 200 ah for a safety factor, and you are talking about $600 worth of new batteries, not $3,000. Even 250 Ah is going to be half as much as the 500 Ah. I would say you could comfortable halve the solar capacity and ditch the wind genny as well - assuming I haven't missed something with your power use.

If you do have an over charging problem and you got standard Trojan FLA's, you would see issues with your electrolyte needing to be topped up all the time. This would give you advance warning of an issue. Obvisouly FLA's are a pain in that you need to check them all the time. They are not maintenance free. They are nice and cheap though. As mentioned, I am a fan of the Kijo Lead carbons. Basically these cost the same as a standard AGM. They are effectively AGM batteries. However, if you do have an over charging problem, you will kill any type of AGM just as fast.

Question, do you have data logging on your current battery monitor? Can you go back through the data and see how much current your batteries get given at the start of each day when you are not using the boat? If you can, this will tell you straight away if it is an overcharging issue. I would expect the solar controller to go to the bulk charge voltage (somewhere between 14.4 and 14.8v) That voltage will be held for the bulk charge period (i.e. 3 hours on an ePever Tracer MPPT unit). Your battery monitor should give the current at the same time. This should answer the question and at the least rule out overcharging as a possible problem, so you can move forward with finding a solution.

Get a hold of them again and just a tell a little lie that you have been in touch with cga and they say you have a claim so will be lodging a claim through disputes tribunal.Never know may come to the party.

Well it sounds like you have covered all bases thoroughly. If you are turning solar off at dock you can't be overcharging them when not in use. (and turning wind off also). It is about as simple as you can get.

Given the promotional material states outstanding warranty terms, "Industry leading" and they are advertised as "Specialised coverage for solar" I think you have a very strong case for a warranty claim.

Moreso, you have taken all practical steps to look after these batteries by having them professionally installed, AND have had two marine electricians check your system. It would be a very brave distributor that denies that warranty claim. If you have already put all of those details to the distributor in writing, I would think you have good grounds for a Consumer Guarantees Act claim. Did you buy them from the distributor or a retailer? It is the retailer you have the contract with.

Two other comments.
How have they actually failed? not holding charge? Lost capacity and not meeting load testing?
At resting voltage, is there any difference at all in the resting voltage of any of the 4 batteries?
You could also take them to a third party and have each battery independently load tested. If one is different to the others this supports your warranty claim. One dud battery will adversely effect the others in the bank. Infact, if I have my facts correct, if one cell wont charge it can cause the other cells to overcharge, thus stuffing all of them. That is a key fact to push back on the distributor in saying that not all 4 batteries would fail, a fault in one can damage all of them under certain circumstances.

The other comment, if you replace them with budget AGM's, the budget AGMs (or FLA's for that matter) will probably only be able to accept 0.1C charging current, which for a 250Ah bank is 25 amps. Your current solar and wind set up is loads bigger than that, so you'd need to remove / depower your charging sources. You could go for the Kijo Lead Carbons, which can handle up to 0.3C. Which would mean you don't need to alter your charging systems (subject to confirmation). The Kijo's have similar characteristics to the Full Rivers in many of the charging parameters.

I don't want to recommend the Kijo's in that you wont have problems with them or that they are top notch quality / you will get the full life span out of them - I haven't had mine long enough to say that. I do recommend them because they are cheap and have better charging current acceptance and other characteristics when compared to the same price budget AGM's. If they live up to their tech spec claims, they will last loads longer than a standard AGM in the context of yacht usage. I understand they are popular in the land yacht market (caravans and motorhomes). The importer / retailer is iVent.

500Ah would cost either $1,250 (5x100Ah) or $1,365 (2x250Ah), and would have basically the same characteristics of the Full Rivers, low internal resistance, high charge acceptance (up to 150amps), very good discharge characteristics for running the inverter etc. It would be close to a straight swap (just need to confirm charge voltages, which I think are the same 14.8v bulk charge, no system changes). If you are interested in those, phone and ask for a discount, I did and got another 10% I think. They had run a special in the Motor Caravan Association magazine and applied that to my purchase.

www.ivent.co.nz/site/search?q=lead%20carbon

Yes, many of the lead carbon batteries targeted for off grid solar have a bulk charge of 13.8v or there abouts.
The Kijo ones I got are for between 14.4 -15.0v with a recommended 14.7v, which happens to be the same as most AGM's. I did look into it at the time, including querying with the supplier, but couldn't come up with any explanation.

The key point is to check the required charging parameters for each specific battery.
Nerada lead carbon are 13.8v
Victron lead carbon are 14.1-14.4v

I am always very wary of batteries that do not give the required charge voltages (bulk, adsorption, float) or batteries that say you can use a generic program on a charger.

This is getting toward the edge of my technical knowledge, but the shunt should be mounted on the negative lead. Not 'across' the batteries as such. Given that, I can't see why you couldn't have two shunts on the same negative lead (in series of course). So you could just install your cheapie ancel 300 in the same line as the BEP shunt. Providing the shunt itself is rated for more current than you expect to draw. I think it is possible to put them on a positive lead, I'm not sure what difference it makes, provided the shunt captures all the current coming and going from the battery (hence putting it close to or at the battery).

Noting I'm on the edge of my technical knowledge here, would pay to read the install instructions on both units. But my basic understanding is current passes through the shunt and is measured, it isn't going to matter how many shunts are on the same line, provided current passes through them fine, as in without excessive resistance. Two different battery monitors shouldn't adversely interact with each other.

I am running lifeline. No choice as my previous set of mid priced batteries died over new year and it was all I could get. Bloody expensive, so I am looking after them like crazy!!!