Victron Blue Smart Charger (Not solar)

[john61ct]

Sure, cheap coulomb counting wattmeters can be placed throughout the system, or with strategic placement of Anderson breaks,

just one, moved as desired to monitor voltage, production of a given source, consumption of a given circuit, etc.

But your House bank shunt being sized big enough for jumpstarting with the BSS ML ACR, IMO you lose too much accuracy for the normally much lower currents.

 

[ADVdreams]

Agree ... would only add shunt and counter if eliminating boosting/starting current from house battery

 

[dwh]

http://www.balmar.net/services-view/sg200/

 

[ADVdreams]

That looks like an awesome device

 

[john61ct]

Still in beta afaic, great intentions but often just does not deliver, very fiddly over complicated

depending on the bank model, **very** inaccurate, way way off for many.

Has the Ah in&out data but doesn't show it.

Balmar SG-200 Battery Monitor - Cruisers & Sailing Forums

New version of Balmar Battery Monitor SG200 Battery Monitor | Balmar Look for " Click Here to Download the SG200 Battery Monitor Manual" State of Charge (SoC%) State of Health (SoH%) Charge/D

www.cruisersforum.com

May be OK for LFP, would really reco Victron or Xantrex first though

but for lead definitely better to stick with SmartGauge.

 

[ADVdreams]

Orion Smart Tr 12/12-30 just arrived, really happy with the build quality! Will update after install.

 

[ADVdreams]

Quick update, did our first trip with the Orion charger installed and I am very happy. With minimal loads on the house battery and daily 20-30min trips to trailheads etc the Orion brings the battery up to full charge. DC-DC charging really shines at shallow discharges, definitively more effective than alternator charging.

For a deeply discharged battery an alternator may be able to outpace Orion’s 24A however as the battery SOC increases the inability to control alternator voltage probably limits its charging rate. I assume this is the basis for the recommendations above to remove the ACR.

I would like the ability to specify the current cutoffs for charging rather than time. So far I’ve just specified bulk and float voltages and left the charger to calculate absorb duration.

 

[john61ct]

Very very few charge sources allow for stop-charge based directly off reaching endAmps.

Usually via an expensive shunt/battery monitor / remote control add-on.

Victron used to have that, e.g. with BMV 712 but disabled that with a firmware update years ago, dunno why.

So long as your charging pattern is pretty consistent, calibrating the AHT time-based control with your observations of trailing amps gets close enough.

This is only important for longevity with lead banks

with LFP the farther & longer you stay away from anywhere near "Full" the better,

and a CC-only charge profile is super easy to implement, simple HVC control.

 

[ADVdreams]

Good point, I planned to do testing to better understand the approximate trailing amps vs time and then specify a specific duration. That said the automatic algorithm seems to be doing an ok job, perhaps undercharging somewhat.

 

[john61ct]

For LFP err on the sooner side, only reason to go longer is if you think you're missing out on significant capacity utilization, very unlikely.

The other issue is, get a balancer that lets you do the job at whatever voltage you like, not one that dictates your charging profile.

NBD if you only need to balance cells once every few months or years

but as they wear that may become more frequent.

 

[john61ct]

With lead err on the side of too Full, for FLA can go hours longer, for GEL maybe more careful, AGM in between.

But 99.99% of rigs out there are chronically undercharging, PSOC abuse most common cause of shortened lifespan, truly broken chargers the common cause of real over charging.

But that's just lead.

 

[ADVdreams]

Great info ...