Epoch Made All What We Want

[SOLAR SUPPORT]

After reading this cacophony of technology, I once again felt the overwhelming comfort of having acted in line with the simple, minimum adequacy principles for the LA-LFP battery transformation. Is it possible for sailors who use their budget sparingly to join the V club by sacrificing all the money they can spend during a summer season? If you want to get caught in a consciously woven technology network, go ahead.

[CaptainRivet]

Originally Posted by hjohnson

Sounds to me like you made your system more complicated than it needs to be and suffered for it.

First, the Electrodacus BMS might be great, but it doesn’t integrate with the victron ecosystem (yet). There are a lot of other BMSs that do work seamlessly, and automatically enable DVCC. This is part of the reason why we went with a REC BMS.

Second, if you were/are using the VE-Direct Remote adapter cable, that’s the wrong product for the job in an integrated system. All it can do is turn the MPPTs on or off, not actually command or send them the battery values and targets. For that you just need the plain VE.Direct cables into a cerbo, or the usb ve.direct converters into a raspberry pi.

If your bms is integrated, all it does to stop the charge sources is set the target voltage to whatever it wants at idle, and potentially the current limit to 0A. Your whole problem with the B220.

Basically these are all self inflicted problems caused by not trusting the technology and not letting it do what it’s supposed to do. Sorry man.

Well thats again wrong. I don't want and need my BMS integrated into victrons nightmare of patched together different networks. I want it fully independent as its proven, simple and extremly robust as it is, the cerbo just should do monitoring on top by getting the systems data and enable some home automation on top, nothing else.

Nothing needs to send any values to the MPPT, the ElectrodacusBMS is the spider in the web means it knows how high the charge current is, whats the SOC and voltage of each cell and simply steer the MPPT or a multi or a alternator based on It via switching it on if charge is needed and switch it off when battery is full. Eg my alternator gets shut off at 93% SOC by electrodacus so it simply intiate the shutdown via the VSR200 which then ramps down the current via sensewire to 0.
The ve-direct port of MPPT is not needed for anything else then remote shut on/off, no complex bus steering or other nightmare....simple, robust and extremely reliable on/off tested by victron to work >10years, cannot be more safe. A simple 180Euro BMS can do all that, no need to spend a 1000Euro on a REC BMS with everything you need for it, eg even buying software so you can administer it. REC is a good BMS but no need to spend 5 times the money for what a 180Euro can do too. Yes its a bit effort to figure exactly out what spec for the remote port of each victron device is needed as again this is often not properly documented by victron, eg on the DC2DC charger no doc at all, its battery voltage while a MPPT operates where every voltage between 5 and 60V can be applied to H port to switch it off(so if cable gets cut by any means its hot(absolute EE noGo Victron!!! And major design flaw) while the multi has a loop just to be open/close without any voltage applied but you just need to enable that via the assistant in the multi). Also because of that major victron design flaw of a hot remote wire means the remote is on and with it the MPPT when remote cable is cut due to any reason, so i want a BP220 ro bypass this and shut them off too so in case that MPPT remote cable is cut by anything the BP220 will shut them down and if its remote get cut its off. So by this solution forced due to the major victron design flaw i can also just use that as on/off and have the VE direct port free and can send this data to the cerbo BUT now the MPPT goes haywire because it doesn't see battery voltage anymore when off. Suggested solution by victron use DVCC with voltage share (so means my BMS system is not independent anymore) which again doesn't work and f.. up my system. So as soon as the cerbo should do more the monitoring the issues starts...no thank you.

So back to simple what works:
And if you wanna synchronize charge voltage or multiple MPPTs you can get a 20Euro battery sense at the LFP and that synchronize via BT connect the voltage and charge of multiple MPPTs, working and simple cheap effectiv. I use a BMV712 instead battery sense as this does an indpendent last resort desaster shut off with its internal relay steering if BMS fails and that delivers also battery data to cerbo via Ve-direct cable and reference voltage to BT victron connect.

The issue/nightmare arises if i need that mppt data into Cerbo via VE-DIRECT. Its actually not understandable by any means that the data cannot be received by cerbo via BT-connect...the BT instant readout delivers all data a cerbo needs from an MPPT or a BMV and cerbo has BT that can receive this data. 2nd the MPPT can synchronize charge between several MPPTs via BT with reference voltage from a BMV, battery sense or a battery charger so that can be steered via reference value of a cerbo too via BT if victron wants. But victron wants to sell proprietary cables instead making it simple and easy to install and integrate into cerbo via BT.

So to do that i need to switch BT connect sync off as it interferes with victron DVCC, then the victron should steer via DVCC and voltage share the MPPTs but that simple function doesn't work **.. up my whole robust system as described.
So i will go back to what i had, invest in one smart 50/100 and do the sync of all 3 MPPT via BT connect.
So i have a BMS independently steering the show and cerbo that monitors it and enables home automation on top without interfering with BMS.

[CaptainRivet]

Again all that is done because charging a Lifepo4 is again totally overingeneered. A lifepo4 is happy if you take constant (or nearly constant is ok too) 14.4V with any current your charge source can deliver and throw this at your Lifepo4 till any cell reaches 3,55V and then shut the charge sources off. Job done...yes thats 98% of its capacity, well screw the rest 2% and keep it simple. And exactly that an electrodacus BMS is doing a bit more elegantly and additionally protect if the voltages go too high or current gets to high or SoC gets to low.
And based on eg SoC i can shut on/off different charge sources ro let this charge source work only in that range like the alternator only does max 93%SOC so it will be never shut off in normal operation before the battery gets disconnected because it full...the point is the battery never gets disconnected, the charge source gets disconnected from it or the loads but battery is always online unless its out of its spec. And to have a 2nd backup if the BMS fails a BMV712 monitors the bank, also via midpoint monitoring so it can dedect deviations if cell 1+2 differs from 3+4 in a 4S config, and throws as last resort the hammer and disconects the bank if above 14.65V or below 10.2V.
And like this you never have an issue with an alternator even in a desaster disconnect creating a huge surge unless the BMV712 throws the last resort hammer. But then you have other major problems then a surge if you installed and stress tested your system properly.

This is the genius concept of electrodacus, different simple approach that has a lot of advantages and very few disadvantages.
The major disavantage is you cannot have multiple BMS is in parallel so you need to make one Bank which require metricously factory matched cells to work without issues longtermed. I can live with that and exactly bought such cells. But you can have a workaround for that too by having an ElectrodacusBMS on main bank (with eg winston cells) that steers also the whole system till 3.60V per cell and have mosfet BMS like JK in parallel with 3,55V end of charge and eg EVE grade B cells for additional capacity. So the parallel banks with mosfets BMS are full earlier and the electrodacus is last and switches of the charge sources then.plus does all the security around for the whole install.

But there are hundreds of electrodacus systems with much worse cells running without issues.

[s/v Jedi]

Isn’t it interesting that there are people who are like magnets for problems. Even when they are the one lonely soul with these problems, they still manage to blame equipment that the whole world is using successfully, albeit in the manner it is supposed to be used.

Doubling down on something that is wrong and just keep banging head into the same thing, over and over and over again, it never stops.

[hjohnson]

Originally Posted by s/v Jedi

Isn’t it interesting that there are people who are like magnets for problems. Even when they are the one lonely soul with these problems, they still manage to blame equipment that the whole world is using successfully, albeit in the manner it is supposed to be used.

Doubling down on something that is wrong and just keep banging head into the same thing, over and over and over again, it never stops.

The funny part is, though, I seem to be the one that is avoiding problems. I took the simple route, hooked everything up the way it was designed, did my research and picked the right components, and everything just works(tm). It's dead simple to look after, and has been happily running for almost 2 years now, with no signs of faults.

All I have is a couple of cat5 cables and serial cables running around.

WHereas you and CaptainRivet have this horribly complex system, with all sorts of sensor wires and control wires, and from what I can tell and what has been described, all sorts of problems.

Take what you will from that, but it seems to me that embracing the technology makes life a lot less complex.

[hjohnson]

Originally Posted by rgleason

Yes, now I recall that Al mentioned SMA too. Perhaps there are two ways that Wakespeed can be controlled, direct from the BMS and alternatively, through the CerboGX using DVCC.



I will try to find the link.

Here is one about the REC BMS where I thought it was communicating using DVCC


Here is where Al discusses communication

So I went through and watched the entirety of Al's presentation (thank for linking it by the way) and have figured out how the whole thing works, and where the confusion comes from (and was up to 2am watching):

Internally, the Wakespeed wants/uses RV-C for getting the information from the BMS. The battery portion of RV-C is something that Al himself had a hand in creating, including a 2 second warning before a disconnect so that the regulator can kill the field, and perhaps actually prevent the disconnect.

The wakespeed also understands the (simpler) SMA protocol, but internally it translates them to RV-C. This is how it supports things like the REC and Lynx BMSs. The ones listed on their site and in the app are the ones that they have tested and proven to work, especially when it comes to the disconnect/alarms and handling that safely.

The last way it can do this is via the NMEA-2000 messages, which is where I think the confusion re DVCC and Victron. If connected to a SmartShunt/BMV-712, a Cerbo will in turn relay the battery data out via NMEA-2000. The Wakespeed can pick that up and have basic functionality so that you don't need to run battery sense wires to get voltage/temperature/current, but it won't have the full self-protect, so you'll need to run additional wires for shutdown and so forth.

[CaptainRivet]

Originally Posted by s/v Jedi

Isn’t it interesting that there are people who are like magnets for problems. Even when they are the one lonely soul with these problems, they still manage to blame equipment that the whole world is using successfully, albeit in the manner it is supposed to be used.

Doubling down on something that is wrong and just keep banging head into the same thing, over and over and over again, it never stops.

The victron forum is full of customers where things don't work. I am sure its somewhere a tickbox in the 4th level submenu missing somewhere or something is enabled which conflicts why DVCC is not working.
My point here is cerbo and that bus system is overly complex with a lot undocumented dependencies. And that you cannot simply wipe the cerbo/completely reset to factory and start from scratch is a anothernmajor design flaw.
It all sound good with bus, full integration as long as its working great that is good but if **** hits the fan you definitely don't want to be in the middle of the ocean troubleshooting that nightmare.
So a simple independent robust system and on top victron monitoring systems.
Monitoring ok, then thats not or wrongly working is not issue, just ingore it till you have time to fix it.

Simple on/off remote switches are easy to check (the optocopplers already giving me visually if the switches are on or off and i can see with 1 view if problem is on the BMS side or not) and if broken bridged or interupted easily and i have a 2nd flatband cable installed where i can simply plug in a replacement electrodacus BMS i have with me and is operational in less then 3min.

[hjohnson]

Originally Posted by CaptainRivet

The victron forum is full of customers where things don't work. I am sure its somewhere a tickbox in the 4th level submenu missing somewhere or something is enabled which conflicts why DVCC is not working.

I'm active on the forums there as well, and virtually all of the issues arise from people attempting to mix and match their victron equipment with cheap third party stuff that wasn't designed for integration.

My point here is cerbo and that bus system is overly complex with a lot undocumented dependencies. It all sound good with bus, full integration as long as its working great that is good but if **** hits the fan you definitely don't want to be in the middle of the ocean troubleshooting that nightmare.
Monitoring ok, then thats not or wrongly working is not issue, just ingore it till you have tome to fix it.

A couple of serial cables and cat-5 cables is a lot less to go wrong than a whole spider's web of on/off cables going from here to there and everywhere. The computer tells me what's wrong with itself. If it tells me that it hasn't seen the dodger MPPT in 30 minutes, I know immediately where to look (in the mean time, the MPPT has gone into safe mode).

Simple on/off remote switches are easy to check (the optocopplers already giving me visually if the switches are on or off and i can see with 1 view if problem is on the BMS side or not) and if broken bridged or interupted easily and i have a 2nd flatband cable installed where i can simply plug in a replacement electrodacus BMS i have with me and is operational in less then 3min.

Software controls are even easier to check, since I can do it remotely. I was sitting at the hotel bar in Auckland (the boat is in Vancouver) when I got a note that my MPPT was acting up. Yeah, I couldn't do anything about it while I was there, but when I got back it was pretty simple to change since I just had to replug the connector (it hadn't been secured properly, and my co-owner had bumped it while opening the engine seacock).

To each their own, but I'll take the far simpler to monitor/maintain/diagnose integrated system over a whole spaghetti mix of wires going this way and that.

[s/v Jedi]

Originally Posted by hjohnson

The funny part is, though, I seem to be the one that is avoiding problems. I took the simple route, hooked everything up the way it was designed, did my research and picked the right components, and everything just works(tm). It's dead simple to look after, and has been happily running for almost 2 years now, with no signs of faults.

All I have is a couple of cat5 cables and serial cables running around.

WHereas you and CaptainRivet have this horribly complex system, with all sorts of sensor wires and control wires, and from what I can tell and what has been described, all sorts of problems.

Take what you will from that, but it seems to me that embracing the technology makes life a lot less complex.

You can’t be further from the truth. I have zero complexity and zero problems. No sensors,no control wires, nothing. You may be confused by me explaining people who want to charge lfp with their alternator how to do that but that doesn’t mean I have any of that… I just try to help them.

[CaptainRivet]

Originally Posted by hjohnson

I'm active on the forums there as well, and virtually all of the issues arise from people attempting to mix and match their victron equipment with cheap third party stuff that wasn't designed for integration.




A couple of serial cables and cat-5 cables is a lot less to go wrong than a whole spider's web of on/off cables going from here to there and everywhere. The computer tells me what's wrong with itself. If it tells me that it hasn't seen the dodger MPPT in 30 minutes, I know immediately where to look (in the mean time, the MPPT has gone into safe mode).



Software controls are even easier to check, since I can do it remotely. I was sitting at the hotel bar in Auckland (the boat is in Vancouver) when I got a note that my MPPT was acting up. Yeah, I couldn't do anything about it while I was there, but when I got back it was pretty simple to change since I just had to replug the connector (it hadn't been secured properly, and my co-owner had bumped it while opening the engine seacock).

To each their own, but I'll take the far simpler to monitor/maintain/diagnose integrated system over a whole spaghetti mix of wires going this way and that.

Well how well work your software controls if you were sent in the dark and you try to start up the system and you are still in the dark but battery is back alive??? Thats one of the most cases that happens....
I have exactly 8 remote cables, all cat 5 too and each goes to a victron device and each has its own optocoppler. If they are all on BMS enabled load and charge, next if device shows on LED it can only be device itself, if off problem with remote cable. Devices are in 2 locations. Plus all victron devices except 1 MPPT is smart, so all are on victron connect too, so i can see if device is enabled by BMS and what it is doing. Very quick and easy to troubleshoot.
ElectrodacusBMS has its own monitoring via screen and a webpage working with every browser.

Agree with Jedi, you cannot be further from the truth.
Whats kinda complex is the victron monitoring on top but well i am learning and its base for home automation and to save to run cables on the boat, so i am not getting bored :-)

[rabbi]

Originally Posted by CaptainRivet

A lifepo4 is happy if you take constant (or nearly constant is ok too) 14.4V with any current your charge source can deliver and throw this at your Lifepo4 till any cell reaches 3,55V and then shut the charge sources off. Job done...yes thats 98% of its capacity, well screw the rest 2% and keep it simple.

So why does EVE provide a nice table for maximum charge current by SoC?



To counter your Victron rants:
I have 1x Victron Phoenix compact inverter, 3x Victron SmartSolar MPPTs, 1x Victron Orion B2B charger, 1x Victron Smartshunt, 2x LiFePo with JKBMS B2A8S20P.
Smartshunt and MPPTs are connected to a RPi VenusOS (aka cerbo) via a 4x VEDirect interface, the inverter via VEBus, the JKBMS via Bluetooth.

The Rpi controls MPPT current & voltage depending on SoC, battery temperature and maximum cell voltage and a few other parameters. For example when >98% SoC the MPPTs deliver only 5A (plus any loads).

Victron Orion B2B charger is "dumb" and can't be controlled by the Cerbo / RPi. I set it to 13.6v charge limit.
However that was already known when I bought it so can't complain. I think they recently introduced a version to address this but we never had the need for alternator charging so are fine with the limited capabilities of our setup.


I haven't touched this configuration for well over a year now, just looked at it via VRM.
The only modification I do is to set a 13v DVCC limit while I'm away so the battery doesn't sit idle for months at 100% Soc.
I remove that limit via VRM a few days before I go to the boat so the batteries are fully charged and balanced when I get there.

[JArcherM]

Wow, how did I miss all of this!!!

[CaptainRivet]

Originally Posted by rabbi

So why does EVE provide a nice table for maximum charge current by SoC?



To counter your Victron rants:
I have 1x Victron Phoenix compact inverter, 3x Victron SmartSolar MPPTs, 1x Victron Orion B2B charger, 1x Victron Smartshunt, 2x LiFePo with JKBMS B2A8S20P.
Smartshunt and MPPTs are connected to a RPi VenusOS (aka cerbo) via a 4x VEDirect interface, the inverter via VEBus, the JKBMS via Bluetooth.

The Rpi controls MPPT current & voltage depending on SoC, battery temperature and maximum cell voltage and a few other parameters. For example when >98% SoC the MPPTs deliver only 5A (plus any loads).

Victron Orion B2B charger is "dumb" and can't be controlled by the Cerbo / RPi. I set it to 13.6v charge limit.
However that was already known when I bought it so can't complain. I think they recently introduced a version to address this but we never had the need for alternator charging so are fine with the limited capabilities of our setup.


I haven't touched this configuration for well over a year now, just looked at it via VRM.
The only modification I do is to set a 13v DVCC limit while I'm away so the battery doesn't sit idle for months at 100% Soc.
I remove that limit via VRM a few days before I go to the boat so the batteries are fully charged and balanced when I get there.

Simple because EVE are used in EVs with charge and discharge rates of 1 till 2C and here you need to...i am happy (and many boaters too) if i have 0.15C charge rate with my 1088AH bank. And that is far away from EVEs table.
lifepo4 needs no absorption and no float charge with absorption you can even overcharge it.
Yes you only use 98% capacity, screw the 2% and keep things simple. You can absorb these 2% but there is more risk to damage then you can win here.
A buddy of mine has since 17 years a very simple system charging his 24V bank with a 80A power supply that delivers 28,6V, discharge is a 8000W competition car stereo. These 17 year old cells have still 91% capacity, get 1.5C discharge and never saw absorption or float. And todays cells have a much better quality then these very old early design calb cells.
Thats basically how you do a capacity test. You don't harm the cell doing that.

[rkagerer]

Hi folks,

Found this thread while researching lithium batteries as a replacement for the AGM starter in my small boat. Does anyone know yet if the Epoch batteries provide the necessary signals to a Wakespeed WS500 to give it advance notice when the BMS is about to disconnect its charging circuit?

I'm specifically interested in the 120AH version (12V 120AH DP12120H).

If not, are there any other LiFePO4's in the 100-150AH range which do this?
I went through all the models in Wakespeed's "approved batteries" drop-down list and didn't see any.

I'm putting in an APM-12 APD for good measure (and some TVS diodes near some of the sensitive electronics), but would feel better knowing the CAN bus stuff is working to further mitigate against any unwanted load dumps.

[CaptainRivet]

Originally Posted by rkagerer

Hi folks,

Found this thread while researching lithium batteries as a replacement for the AGM starter in my small boat. Does anyone know yet if the Epoch batteries provide the necessary signals to a Wakespeed WS500 to give it advance notice when the BMS is about to disconnect its charging circuit?

I'm specifically interested in the 120AH version (12V 120AH DP12120H).

If not, are there any other LiFePO4's in the 100-150AH range which do this?
I went through all the models in Wakespeed's "approved batteries" drop-down list and didn't see any.

I'm putting in an APM-12 APD for good measure (and some TVS diodes near some of the sensitive electronics), but would feel better knowing the CAN bus stuff is working to further mitigate against any unwanted load dumps.

Instead TVS diodes use an isolated DC2DC converter to galvanically isolate your electronics from all spikes and distortions. I can highly recommend the isolated Victron Orion-TR 12-12-30A (non smart version= converter and cheap, smart is the charger and expensive). Its output is also adjustable and stabilized means you can compensate voltage drop with it and give all your electronics superclean perfectly stabilized 13.8 or eg 14.4V = perfect working conditions doesn't matter whats the actual voltage of the bank.
Your expensive nav eletronics love that and will thank you with long life especially the ones newer then 2015 as all the big 4 saved money on filtering and power supply eg raymarine axioms or quantum radars are really bad (compare power supply of axiom and eg e-series and you will see yourself what i mean)...the reason a lot die soon is exactly that and as the filters are so bad it cannot filter out anymore and kill the semiconductors or ICs. And that isolated DC2Dc converter will prevent that and also protect from a surge spike from eg a sudden alternator cut off.
A good move on all installations by the way...