question

Brad Huber avatar image
Brad Huber asked

Trouble with battery charging and state of charge

Hi all,


I have a campervan outfitted with Victron.


Here is my setup:
Lion Energy Safari 105 x 3

Victron SmartShunt

Orion Smart 12v-30a non-isolated dc charge

Cerbo GX

Battery Protect

Smart Solar MPPT controller

[add inverter]

[add solar capacity]


So now the problem-

I've had this system for about a year and it's been relatively problem free. Recently the batteries are not taking (or holding?) a charge.

The battery reports as 90-100% full but the voltage doesn't seem right for this. See screenshots. If I put a high current load on the system it will very quickly go undervoltage and power cycle the whole electrical system.

When I connect a generator or start the vehicle (and dc-dc charger) it will do bulk charge for a moment, but then quickly switch to absorption or trickle. Also I just left the van sitting for a few days with good solar. The voltage was a bit higher and when I put a load on it did run for a couple of minutes, but then still went undervoltage. Perhaps I'm only ever getting a trickle charge level of input?


Anyway where should I look to solve this? I searched and reach half a dozen articles that weren't quite the same thing. Should I be looking at the smartshunt? My thought is if the state of charge is high, it won't allow bulk charging. Should I start by trying to reset the smartshunt? I can't seem to manually set the SOC though the bluetooth app gui indicates I can.

Screenshots were taken shortly after about 6 low voltage power cycle events.

Any help is appreciated. Thanks

img-9736.jpgimg-9735.jpgimg-9737.png

battery charging
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1 Answer
kevgermany avatar image
kevgermany answered ·

The shunt only measures and reports, it does not control.

Charged voltage is set at float level. For solar charging it should be set just below absorption voltage on the charger.

Charge detection time should be increased for solar.

What we really need to see is the battery settings in your chargers, however the problems may be that the BMS in the batteries is shutting down under heavy loads due to cell imbalance. Do you have internal cell voltage reporting from the BMSs in your batteries?

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