My friend has a horse lorry with living quarters and it's been nothing but trouble every time they went away to shows. The old system had two lead-acid batteries with a very small AC battery charger and a 24/12 DC-DC charger that had all failed.
I've never built anything like this before but with a few YouTube ideas and some equipment from 12 Volt Planet I have installed the following equipment
2 x Platinum SD6110L Batteries
1 x Phoenix Smart IP43 Charger 12/50
1 x Orion-Tr Smart 24/12-30A Isolated DC-DC (Not Wired Yet)
1 x Smart Battery Protect 12/24V - 100A
1 x SmartShunt 500A
1 x Cerbo GX
Everything in the living quarters is powered using DC power via two smaller fuse boxes protecting each circuit. There are a few AC sockets but they are only used when on AC hookup or when the onboard petrol generator is running. As this is only used at horse shows etc it's never going to be used fully off the grid so I didn't see the need for AC inverters.
The lorry needs to be in a constant ready-to-go state as they can change their mind like the wind so currently the 12v smart charger is always on when the lorry is in storage and will also remain on when they are at shows on AC power. I'm a little unsure if this is the best idea and even safe. Should i configure any logic in the cerbo gx using the relay to cycle the charging or just leave the system to continue to float?
Storage idle state -
I'm still trying to decide how to control the DC-DC charger because if the AC power has just been removed and you're about to drive the lorry the batteries will already be fully charged.
Can I get any of the Orion-Tr Smart statistics into the cerbo?
What's the best way to control the Orion-Tr Smart to prevent overcharging?
What happens if the Orion-Tr Smart & and Phoenix Smart are both on at the same time?
After I've got this part nailed next will be to move onto auto starting the generator. The current control panel is not smart so i would look at possibly using something like a deep sea electronics generator controller. The main requirement for starting the generator would be no AC power detected (Phoenix charger is off) and the batteries are getting low.
What could i use to input AC information into the cerbo GX if not using an inverter? This would also let the system know the generator is running and outputting electricity.
Another thought is to use a second SmartShunt on the lorry 24v system to keep an eye on the starting batteries and possibly use a small 24v charger to keep them topped up if required.
Will the information from the second Shunt appear in a separate tile?
I think i have covered most of my questions here but i'm sure i will have some more :)
