Replacing house bank, charger, inverter, regulator etc

[chris95040]

OK, my old agm house bank is toast and my charger/inverter are old junk. Time to upgrade! Anyone have a credible opinion on the right gear for the following? I'm having a deer in the headlights moment with this.

200-400Ah of 12V LifePO4 House Batteries (used to do 400Ah of AGM, maybe can get by w/ less lithium)
Starter Battery (for a 4 cyl 55hp diesel)
Shore charger (120VAC) and Inverter (120VAC)
External regulator for my 150Amp 12V alternator

Can anyone recommend decent gear? I'd love for my alternator and my shore charger to be able to charge both the starter battery and the house bank without me thinking about it.

...Later I want modest solar for a "get charged during the week in time for the weekend" kinda setup, and if it could run my fridge with excess energy when the batteries are topped up that'd be neat, too. Don't know if I need to take that into account while designing the non-solar piece of this.

[hjohnson]

I’m a big fan of all things Victron. A year and a half ago, we went through what you’re doing, and are

very happy with the results. It certainly wasn’t the cheapest way to get there, but it’s worked beautifully ever since.

We installed the following:

* Victron Multiplus-Ii 12/2000/80 It’s a 2000W inverter, can charge the battery at 80A and has all sorts of nice features like power limiting, so we can plug in at our friend’s dock where drawing more than 10A will trip the breaker.
* A DIY battery with a REC BMS that speaks to the victron kit. It’s 460Ah of storage. We just no longer care about battery power any more.
* Wakespeed WS500 alternator regulator so our alternator can directly charge the lithium bank without frying itself, or overloading our poor little Yanmar 1GM10
* a pair of Victron MPPTs, one for the solar on our dodger, the other for a fold up solar panel
* a Victron Cerbo GX to manage and interconnect everything. It also lets us remote control and monitor out boat from home, so we can keep an eye on her and her systems.
* an Orion TR DC-DC charger to maintain our starting battery.
* other bits and bobs to make it all work.

Anyhow, yeah, I’ll admit that this is a real Gucci/rollsroyce system, but it is really, really nice. We can come and go from the dock, and virtually never worry about power.

[h20man]

Another vote for Victron.

[hjohnson]

Originally Posted by h20man

Another vote for Victron.

One of the other really nice things about the Victron ecosystem is that you don’t need to buy into it all at once. With a bit of planning/research, you can grow the system over time as funding is available.

As anexample, This year, we added the second mppt. We’re also in the process of adding reliable tank monitoring to our sewage tank, our two potable water tanks, and our bilge sump.

But in general, all their kit is good on its own, but really good once integrated.

[Statistical]

The starter battery can be lead acid. Large enough for the required CCA. Looking up your engine manual or datasheet should give you the required amperage. Total capacity (Ah) is largely irrelevant for that task. Just old school flood lead acid starter battery not agm or sealed or anything.

Personally I would have everything (solar, shorepower, alternator, wind, portable fusion generator) charge the big lithium bank. Then you just need a small DC to DC charger to top off the starter.

While starters pull a lot of amps they run for maybe 10 seconds at most so in terms of energy is pretty much nothing. 50A draw for 10 seconds is 0.14 Ah (or 1.7 Wh). Even the tiniest DC to DC charger can replace that in a few minutes.

[shimari]

Our boat is Mastervolt and it's quality kit. But it's frustrating trying to learn anything about the kit. Mastervolt just doesn't seem to care about the DIY'r. No forums, no open source support. They do have an 800 tech support number, but it's hard to find. At this point, I'm on a first name basis with two of the techs!

Victron, on the other hand, has forums and lots of support for your DIY'r. I'd switch over to Victron in a heartbeat if weren't so blasted expensive to do so.

Go Victron - you won't be disappointed.

[two-rocks]

My Victron gear has been flawless for the 8+ years I have owned some of it (newer stuff as well).

If Victron makes the product I need as an upgrade or replacement, I just buy it. ;-)

[flightlead404]

I did this over a week back in March.

2 x LiTime 200aHr "plus" batteries
Victron Skyla 70amp "+1" charger - one main output and one 3A "trickle" charger designed for a start battery
Victor Orion "smart" Tr 30a dc-dc charger to charge house from start when alternator on

works great.

I also have 630W solar with EP Ever Tracer 6415AN

[chris95040]

These were really helpful responses- thanks everyone