LFP and Alternator settings

[Pete7]

Originally Posted by newhaul

That is a good option For others the dc2dc is the option of choice as it does the same thing and cost is about 1/4 .that of the Nordkyn VRC .

Agreed, like Newhaul, alternator charging isn't our main source of power, so 30A from an Orion is quite acceptable.

Pete

[sailorboy1]

Well I have 400ah house bank and that is probably among the smaller banks most 40' boats cruisers would have on their boat. Sometimes I do have to use the alternator just to charge and it would be crazy to run a 50HP engine to charge at a 30amp rate. I already have my 100amp alternator belt reduced to limit belt dust and wear.

[newhaul]

Originally Posted by sailorboy1

Well I have 400ah house bank and that is probably among the smaller banks most 40' boats cruisers would have on their boat. Sometimes I do have to use the alternator just to charge and it would be crazy to run a 50HP engine to charge at a 30amp rate. I already have my 100amp alternator belt reduced to limit belt dust and wear.

What did you install to reduce the alternator output?

[sailorboy1]

Originally Posted by newhaul

What did you install to reduce the alternator output?

Nothing. Already had a Balmar ARS-5 regulator with a belt load manager

[tanglewood]

Originally Posted by SOLAR SUPPORT

My aim is to provide the cell balance of my drop-in batteries, whose HvCutoff voltage drops every month and has recently been 3.4 vpc. I don't know how long the batteries were in the warehouse when I first bought them. I realized that I needed to solve the cell balance problem, which I predicted to deteriorate more and more in the long run, without delay.

I did not have a thesis that this problem that I have experienced is experienced in all drop-in batteries. However, similarly, a drop-in battery with a decreasing HvCutoff voltage may experience capacity problems in the future if the cell balance problem that increases over time is not resolved. How do I know which drop-in batteries will experience such stability problems?

So your original battery BMS did not include a balancer?

[newhaul]

Originally Posted by sailorboy1

Nothing. Already had a Balmar ARS-5 regulator with a belt load manager

Well alrightey then your good to go just use the lfp setting that it has

[newhaul]

Originally Posted by tanglewood

So your original battery BMS did not include a balancer?

Likely passive balance and only at 3.6vpc or 3.65vpc and likely never charged to that point for any length of time

[tanglewood]

Originally Posted by donradcliffe

That is exactly his point. After a month of trying to get the balancer in the BMS to balance my cells, I bought a $10 active balancer on Ebay. It took less than 24 hours to get the cells balanced, so I unplugged it 2 years ago and have not had to use it since. The BMS balancers move milliamps around, and only when you are overcharging the batteries. The active balancers move amps around and work at any SOC.

OK, so a crap battery that has to be fixed. I think I also see now that he was talking about HIS battery, not about LFP batteries in general. I read it as a general statement about all LFP batteries.


My experience has been similar to your with respect to batteries staying in balance once initially balance. My setup has to be manually balanced, and so far in 3 years I have only had to do it once. It only took 6ah @3.6V to bring the low cells up to snuff on a 360ah bank. So the amount of imbalance was actually very small, but I can see how only moving milliamps might not work, especially if only done for small windows of time. But in all frankness, I would consider such a battery to be a defective/inadequate design. It's basically a balancer that can't balance the cells.


What are the make/model of these batteries that can't balance themselves?

[newhaul]

Originally Posted by tanglewood

OK, so a crap battery that has to be fixed. I think I also see now that he was talking about HIS battery, not about LFP batteries in general. I read it as a general statement about all LFP batteries.


My experience has been similar to your with respect to batteries staying in balance once initially balance. My setup has to be manually balanced, and so far in 3 years I have only had to do it once. It only took 6ah @3.6V to bring the low cells up to snuff on a 360ah bank. So the amount of imbalance was actually very small, but I can see how only moving milliamps might not work, especially if only done for small windows of time. But in all frankness, I would consider such a battery to be a defective/inadequate design. It's basically a balancer that can't balance the cells.


What are the make/model of these batteries that can't balance themselves?

Although I am a diy bank i do an annual capacity test from12.5vdc 14.6vdc and my bank shows I'm still at 265.2ah capacity on a 250ah bank . And when I check each cell they are all within .01vdc of each other after 4 years with only initial top balance.

[CaptainRivet]

Originally Posted by Nicholson58

Proper advice!

We have Balmar external alternator regulators on both alternators. These and the Victron, solar were reprogrammed for our new Blue Heron lithium system.

The wakespeed costs more then his LFP drop ins…
The guy is riding a dead horse…and put a bandage on the wound instead tackling the root cause.
First he screwed up his drop ins by not charging them to manufacturer spec, his drop ins have no connection to external and no cell voltages shown…how can you buy such a driop in???
He puts up all the theories how an LFP need to be charged but over a year never got his drop ins to top balance…several told him you have a problem till he realized that his drop ins cut of at 13.9V and that really something is wrong.
Then he tells us all how’s his whatever PWN Solar charger need to be optimized…all told him replace it with a proper MPPT but he tells everybody we don‘t understand his problem.
Then he hacks the Mitubshi 115A alternator so it’s charging full blast till it cooks and internal temp regulation massively throttles it and turns it off….so 5min on full blast with 90A till its an stove, 5min off again full blast on and so on….
Then we tell him how to top balance and get cells back in balance without opening the drop ins, he cuts them open screwing the warranty.
Again we tell him to replace the crap drop in BMS and he buys Smart active balancer because his cells where unbalanced…what was the issue/root cause, he doesn‘t know because he doesn‘t know when the crap BMS starts balancing with how much mA. Well an active balancer covers up the real root cases and finally shows him the cell voltages but are this cell voltages correct or off…the active Daly balancer he uses is known to be off so the voltage values you get are off too. But he doesn‘t care…battery is balanced all is fine now…back how to optimze his PWN solar controller
Just wondering how long people answer his questions…I am done and out here

[SOLAR SUPPORT]

Originally Posted by CaptainRivet

The wakespeed costs more then his LFP drop ins…
The guy is riding a dead horse…and put a bandage on the wound instead tackling the root cause.
First he screwed up his drop ins by not charging them to manufacturer spec, his drop ins have no connection to external and no cell voltages shown…how can you buy such a driop in???
He puts up all the theories how an LFP need to be charged but over a year never got his drop ins to top balance…several told him you have a problem till he realized that his drop ins cut of at 13.9V and that really something is wrong.
Then he tells us all how’s his whatever PWN Solar charger need to be optimized…all told him replace it with a proper MPPT but he tells everybody we don‘t understand his problem.
Then he hacks the Mitubshi 115A alternator so it’s charging full blast till it cooks and internal temp regulation massively throttles it and turns it off….so 5min on full blast with 90A till its an stove, 5min off again full blast on and so on….
Then we tell him how to top balance and get cells back in balance without opening the drop ins, he cuts them open screwing the warranty.
Again we tell him to replace the crap drop in BMS and he buys Smart active balancer because his cells where unbalanced…what was the issue/root cause, he doesn‘t know because he doesn‘t know when the crap BMS starts balancing with how much mA. Well an active balancer covers up the real root cases and finally shows him the cell voltages but are this cell voltages correct or off…the active Daly balancer he uses is known to be off so the voltage values you get are off too. But he doesn‘t care…battery is balanced all is fine now…back how to optimze his PWN solar controller
Just wondering how long people answer his questions…I am done and out here

Hey, Rivet, my two mares are doing just fine. I am galloping on them breathlessly. The nail of one of the eight shoes has fallen off. Thanks to the smart active balancers, I determined the missing nail on which shoe and nailed it. I think your mare is limping too. You asked me about the active balancer supply link, remember?

My original Mitzi alternator is also in good condition and runs fine between 80-90°C. SCR is mppt. SCR charging is automatically cut off by VSR when the batteries are 80%Soc. Since the active balancers in the LFP batteries work automatically, I don't need to top up and balance my batteries every day.

If the average voltage of the cells in the lfp is above 3.2 vpc, the smart active balancer detects this and initiates active balancing. Active balancing of cells is only in question when there is a balance problem of 0.020V and above. This means that the active balancer only works when necessary.

[vk4hr]

Use the starter or existing lead acid battery as a buffer and charge the lithium via a switched and output controlled dc to dc charger

[lateral]

Originally Posted by wholybee

The MC618 can be programmed with your phone only if you also have the SG200 and the Bluetooth thingy. If you prefer the Victron BVM, then you are stuck with the magnetic pen. And having to buy all three just to avoid the 30 year old magnetic pen trick is really expensive.

I bought the SG200 about 5 yrs ago when they were giving away the dongle.. Never had an accurate SOC out of it and the SOH has been 100 % for the whole time. (Haha) Granted I think I never cycled the batteries deep enough to make it work. I will leave it in as backup and perhaps use alarm feature and as a multimeter check. Someone just bought my FLA’s so I think I just committed myself.
The LFP’s have lost < than 0.01 V over 8 months sitting in my garage; quite amazing.
The LiFePO4 I’m about to drop in will have the bvm712 as
Field cut off for the alt,.and timed ,iirc, by mc618 configurability.( 2x bms’s on 4s2P for high/low V.)
I better get back up to speed seeing as I’m actually going to install the LFP’s.-
Pretty low tech.

[sailorboy1]

I just use my magnetic pen to program my Balmar regulator. I take the regulator out of the system and take to the nav desk to do it powering with my acc plug in leads I long ago made up.

[newhaul]

Originally Posted by sailorboy1

I just use my magnetic pen to program my Balmar regulator. I take the regulator out of the system and take to the nav desk to do it powering with my acc plug in leads I long ago made up.

Sounds like you got this down . Let us know how it's going. In a couple months with the new lifepo4 bank .