MPPT charging cab battery & Lithium (1 Viewer)

[Roger S]

I had a 200w solar panel fitted by the main stealer and they fitted a MPPT. When I collected the van I slipped in my Lithium battery, changed the charger to a Victron and set it to charge Lithium.

I have bought another 200w panel which I will fit and a Victron 100 30 MPPT. It has occurred to me that I assume the original solar charger will have been for the gel battery and charged the cab battery at the same time. So will it have been okay with my Lithium battery ? But more importantly will my new Victron charger be okay with both the leisure Lithium and thr cab battery connected ?

Thank you

 

[peterc10]

I had a 200w solar panel fitted by the main stealer and they fitted a MPPT. When I collected the van I slipped in my Lithium battery, changed the charger to a Victron and set it to charge Lithium.

I have bought another 200w panel which I will fit and a Victron 100 30 MPPT. It has occurred to me that I assume the original solar charger will have been for the gel battery and charged the cab battery at the same time. So will it have been okay with my Lithium battery ? But more importantly will my new Victron charger be okay with both the leisure Lithium and thr cab battery connected ?

Thank you

From memory the Victron MPPT charger can only charge one battery bank. That is why I bought a Votronic MPPT charger, which charges the LiFePo4 leisure battery bank and also trickle charges the engine battery. The other advantage of the Votronic unit is that it can switch my Dometic fridge from gas to 12v when the leisure batteries are full, and monitors their state every half hour. When the sun is beaming down it can save a lot of gas by using free electricity.

I have now added a couple more solar panels and run them through a Victron MPPT charger, which is cheaper to buy than the Votronic unit.

 

[Jev88]

If your new controller only charges one battery then a simple solution is one of Vanbitz Battery Masters - lots have bought them with Funster discount.
Three wires and takes surplus leisure charge and trickles to engine battery. I haven't checked if lithium compatible though.

 

[headlight]

If your new controller only charges one battery then a simple solution is one of Vanbitz Battery Masters - lots have bought them with Funster discount.
Three wires and takes surplus leisure charge and trickles to engine battery. I haven't checked if lithium compatible though.

The Vanbitz Battery Master is fine with lithium leisure and lead acid starter batteries.
It is the set up I have and keeps my starter battery topped up.

 

[AdrianChen]

I had a 200w solar panel fitted by the main stealer and they fitted a MPPT. When I collected the van I slipped in my Lithium battery, changed the charger to a Victron and set it to charge Lithium.

I have bought another 200w panel which I will fit and a Victron 100 30 MPPT. It has occurred to me that I assume the original solar charger will have been for the gel battery and charged the cab battery at the same time. So will it have been okay with my Lithium battery ? But more importantly will my new Victron charger be okay with both the leisure Lithium and thr cab battery connected ?

Thank you

The Victron will be single output, and should be wired to only the Leisure batteries,

Not sure which MPPT the dealer fitted if it was dual output or how it was wired so I don't know if it was directly maintaining the Cab battery. If it can provide a lithium profile then it is fine, but I wouldn't personally use a gel setting for your lithium since the absorbtion phase may well be 8hours which is too long, and you will be relying on the Lithium's BMS to shut down the charge to avoid overcharging, which will work but is not optimal.

The Carthago CBE system will trickle charge the Cab battery from the Hab battery when the Hab battery is over 13.5v (ie during charging) and the main panel is switched on, mine is able to give up to 6amps I think.

We turn the main panel off during storage, so the Carthargo system does not then maintain the Cab battery, so we use an Ablemail AMT12 which does a similar job to the Battery Master and maintains the Cab battery automatically.

I suppose we have a weakness in that we then have to leave the main battery switch turned on, because If it is turned off the Solar and Trickle charger cannot do their thing. I do have the option to only turn it on every couple of weeks for a few days I suppose, but I'm lazy!

Did you make any change to the EHU charger profile when you installed the Lithium?

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[Roger S]

From memory the Victron MPPT charger can only charge one battery bank. That is why I bought a Votronic MPPT charger, which charges the LiFePo4 leisure battery bank and also trickle charges the engine battery. The other advantage of the Votronic unit is that it can switch my Dometic fridge from gas to 12v when the leisure batteries are full, and monitors their state every half hour. When the sun is beaming down it can save a lot of gas by using free electricity.

I have now added a couple more solar panels and run them through a Victron MPPT charger, which is cheaper to buy than the Votronic unit.

Arh okay if it can only charge one then that answers that issue.

Thank you Roger

 

[bigtwin]

Arh okay if it can only charge one then that answers that issue.

Thank you Roger

It does, but it doesn’t rule out your use of the Victron if you adopt the solution advocated by headlight .

Ian

 

[Roger S]

If your new controller only charges one battery then a simple solution is one of Vanbitz Battery Masters - lots have bought them with Funster discount.
Three wires and takes surplus leisure charge and trickles to engine battery. I haven't checked if lithium compatible though.

Okay thanks I will look into that

 

[Roger S]

The Victron will be single output, and should be wired to only the Leisure batteries,

Not sure which MPPT the dealer fitted if it was dual output or how it was wired so I don't know if it was directly maintaining the Cab battery. If it can provide a lithium profile then it is fine, but I wouldn't personally use a gel setting for your lithium since the absorbtion phase may well be 8hours which is too long, and you will be relying on the Lithium's BMS to shut down the charge to avoid overcharging, which will work but is not optimal.

The Carthago CBE system will trickle charge the Cab battery from the Hab battery when the Hab battery is over 13.5v (ie during charging) and the main panel is switched on, mine is able to give up to 6amps I think.

We turn the main panel off during storage, so the Carthargo system does not then maintain the Cab battery, so we use an Ablemail AMT12 which does a similar job to the Battery Master and maintains the Cab battery automatically.

I suppose we have a weakness in that we then have to leave the main battery switch turned on, because If it is turned off the Solar and Trickle charger cannot do their thing. I do have the option to only turn it on every couple of weeks for a few days I suppose, but I'm lazy!

Did you make any change to the EHU charger profile when you installed the Lithium?

Okay im starting to understand thank you. I did change the charging profile on the Victron charger to Lithium so that should be okay

 

[Roger S]

The Victron will be single output, and should be wired to only the Leisure batteries,

Not sure which MPPT the dealer fitted if it was dual output or how it was wired so I don't know if it was directly maintaining the Cab battery. If it can provide a lithium profile then it is fine, but I wouldn't personally use a gel setting for your lithium since the absorbtion phase may well be 8hours which is too long, and you will be relying on the Lithium's BMS to shut down the charge to avoid overcharging, which will work but is not optimal.

The Carthago CBE system will trickle charge the Cab battery from the Hab battery when the Hab battery is over 13.5v (ie during charging) and the main panel is switched on, mine is able to give up to 6amps I think.

We turn the main panel off during storage, so the Carthargo system does not then maintain the Cab battery, so we use an Ablemail AMT12 which does a similar job to the Battery Master and maintains the Cab battery automatically.

I suppose we have a weakness in that we then have to leave the main battery switch turned on, because If it is turned off the Solar and Trickle charger cannot do their thing. I do have the option to only turn it on every couple of weeks for a few days I suppose, but I'm lazy!

Did you make any change to the EHU charger profile when you installed the Lithium?

It looks to me as the dealer has wired the MPPT incorrectly, the middle 2 wires are identical to those above the fridge coming from the solar panel !

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[AdrianChen]

It looks to me as the dealer has wired the MPPT incorrectly, the middle 2 wires are identical to those above the fridge coming from the solar panel !

Well that would be worth popping a meter on it to check! - I guess you haven't been getting much charge at all?

 

[bigtwin]

It looks to me as the dealer has wired the MPPT incorrectly, the middle 2 wires are identical to those above the fridge coming from the solar panel !View attachment 874480

They may look the same but until you measure the voltage on them you won’t know if they are one and the same.

If they are the solar wires then you should see circa 20V there (when the sun’s shining).

Ian

 

[Roger S]

I will check, but the writing on the solar wires I recognise as I was checking to see if they would take another panel. I've just reached 60 I'm jot sure if I have time left to wait for the sun to shine