question

gordon-bleu avatar image
gordon-bleu asked

Job . Need advice will pay by paypal lifepo4 smart

  1. Hi there.

I bought a solar set including a

-victron 100/30 mppt charger

- a victron 100ah 12 v smart lifepo4 battery

- a small bsm

...from a company thats not very helpfull and told me i should ask the internet if i need any support to install theese items in my camper.

-I got basic skills with solar systems but mainly agm batteries and pwm chargers

-i'm familiar with most tools and basic electronics

-i'm unfortunately not a computer nerd

I need someone who is familiar with victron items to tell me how to set up the system (if i need anything else..) and how not to set my camper on fire.

Ill pay for advice( best by phone ) by paypal.

Customer service with hands on experience is welcome

I speak german and english.

I dont want to send countless messages...

Anyone out there?

Best

P.


offgrid
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6 Answers
bathnm avatar image
bathnm answered ·

What is your specific issue. There is good material in the Victron manuals on how to connect things up.

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gordon-bleu avatar image
gordon-bleu answered ·

Yep.

thats right. You'll find information bout every single item online but no info bout how to combine them.

No info bout what and how to combine...

No helpfull customer service.

Still offering cash.

So i dont have to pack stuff up and walk to the postoffice to ship things back to the seller....

Anyone up for some cash for infos?


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gordon-bleu avatar image
gordon-bleu answered ·

Question one...

How can you connect the so smart battery to the charger by bluetooth to the 1200$ battery is not charged unbalanced as hapownd to me?

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bathnm avatar image bathnm commented ·

Please read the manuals. The SmallBMS manual has some very clear guidelines on how to install and trigger a solar charger to disconnect. Ref page 3, figure 3. Battery charger connection details on page 2, section 3.5.


Regarding the battery charger and commissioning. The Lithium Smart battery manual also has good commissioning guidelines. Section 4.4 covers initial charge of the batteries.

Reading the manuals will also answer your question re bluetooth. There is no bluetooth communication capability between the battery and charger to control charging. That is the purpose of the smallBMS.

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Mike Dorsett avatar image
Mike Dorsett answered ·

No, you can't connect the battery by Bluetooth. Bluetooth seems to be for system monitoring and set up using Victron connect.


If you post details about your "small bsm" people might have more information to work with. Also more details about your application - what you are retying to do? You have a solar charger, a battery and an undefined bsm that does not appear to fit - the Victron smart battery has a BMS built in, but needs an interface to control the MPPT. This is usually done with a Venus device - either a GX or a raspberry pi running Venus OS.


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Mike Dorsett avatar image Mike Dorsett commented ·
Also, with a single 12V system, you should only need to program the battery voltage limits from the data sheet into the MPPT, using Victron connect to get the basic system working.
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gordon-bleu avatar image
gordon-bleu answered ·

Till now the setup looks as follows:

2x 160 wp 44 volt mono pannels

Victron smart Mppt 100/30 charger

Victron 100ah smart battery

Victron small bms ( i didnt make that up / the name is printed on the item )

And a victron smart ip22 charger.

What else do i need to turn this system into a working machine?

Does the bms need to be replaced with some other item?

I tried to charge the battery once after a while i got a warning via bt that the cells are unbalanced.

Is there a way that the battery talks to the charger and tells it what it needs instead of making me nervous? Do i have to spend a ton of money on extra stuff just to upgrade to lifipo even if the battery itself costs a lot ?

I would really appreciate an advice like

You need this one or two things and youre good to go. this is the items and this is how it works...


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bathnm avatar image bathnm commented ·
There is no bluetooth communication between the Lithium Smart batteries and the IP22. Reading both manuals will let you know that. If the IP22 has no remote on/off that can be triggered by the BMS (Sorry have not read that manuals so do not know. Then you might need to consider installing a Smart Battery Protect (SBP) between it and the battery. The smart battery protect can then disconnect the charge source when signalled by the BMS. This is how I commissioned my batteries. The SBP was between charger and battery, on high cell voltage the SBP disconnected the battery, the voltage dropped and the SBP. reconnected and charging continued. The first balancing charge this happened several times. I cant remember the last time I saw a high cell issue on charging.
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Mike Dorsett avatar image
Mike Dorsett answered ·

1635188179439.png

Above image from the data sheet for the Victron smallBMS (ok, I don't keep the Victron range in my head). If you haven't downloaded the data sheets / Manuals for all your items, that's a good place to start.

I'll assume that you have the cables to connect the small bms to the battery, but I don't think that the solar charger has a remote control input - BUT the VE direct port Rx pin can be re-programed for this function. The IP22 charger may have a remote control input - I don't see this on the data sheet. You will ned to get a VE direct cable - if you can't get one with one plug, then the spare plug can be cut off. Wiring for the cable can be found in the VE-direct protocol data sheet, also download from Victron.

Hope this helps. Mike.


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