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janneb avatar image
janneb asked

Bluesmart charger - How does the Power Supply Function affect the battery bank?

I want to have the best config of our bluesmart IP22 12/30/3 charger for live onboard at a quay, having the charger plugged in for some months, during the winter.

The battery bank is four Victron Gel 90Ah deep cycle, in parallel. The load when not sailing is 0.6 - 15Amp with heater, fridge and LED-lights taking about 150Ah/24h when it's cold in December to March.

When at a quay we have land power all the time. But there is a risc for broken fuses or other failure, which implies a need of a battery bank to keep the heater, with cooling fan running, so it doesn't get overheated in the case of a power failure from the land power. I want the Gel batteries to be as close to untouched as possible to live as long as possible.

Should I set the charger in Power Supply mode? Which voltage is recommended to support the loads, but not affecting the Gel batteries that shall be fully charged? Storage voltage is 13.2V when in Charge mode.


bluesmart ip22
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2 Answers
mvas avatar image
mvas answered ·

No, you should not change from Charger mode, to Power Supply mode with the battery bank still connected. Don't you have FLOAT mode?

If want to use Power Supply mode then remove the Battery Bank. Bring the batteries home. Keep the batteries on a battery maintainer / float charger.

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janneb avatar image janneb commented ·
Thanks for your answer!


I can understand your advice, but what is the reason for your advice?


The float mode is not good for long time connected chargers to Victron Gel (or AGM) batteries, should be Storage voltage on 13.2V, I've learned, not mentioned the Power mode.


But if I understand you right, you say that I cannot be sure that there is zero current taken from the batteries in Power mode. Then it might be better to keep the Charge mode with the Storage voltage as above.
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kevgermany avatar image
kevgermany answered ·

Set the charger to power supply, with voltage at float or storage.

Kick the batteries up to full charge every month or two. You could do this by setting equalisation to the absorption voltage and running that for a couple of hours.

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janneb avatar image janneb commented ·

Thank you for your answer!

Interesting that you rely on Power mode for fully charged batteries having load that varies a bit. Can you say that the charger in Power mode is faster to support load than the battery bank, or is your recommendation a way to ‘equalize’ the battery bank not so often as Storage mode does, which is once a week?

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kevgermany avatar image kevgermany ♦♦ janneb commented ·
In power mode the charger operates at fixed voltage and services the load. Any extra load above this will come from the batteries. At float or storage voltage the batteries can still charge, but slowly.

I wasn't aware that storage would kick the batteries weekly, but in that case ignore my suggestion about monthly boosts.


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janneb avatar image janneb kevgermany ♦♦ commented ·

You mean that the Power mode supports the load as long as it is less than the max current from the bluesmart charger, which is 30A and that nothing is taken from the batteries(?)

I will make a test and be back here with my measures.


I saw the storage equalizing info on: https://www.victronenergy.com/upload/documents/Datasheet-Blue-Smart-IP22-Charger-230-VAC-EN.pdf

but not in the charger manual...

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