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rkapsi avatar image
rkapsi asked

Orion XS goes from Bulk to Float

I'm trying to charge a fairly small (only 10Ah) LiFePO4 starter battery from my house battery using the Orion XS. The absorption voltage is 14.4 and the float voltage is 13.5. Upon turning it on it's doing a Bulk charge for a short period (let's say 10 seconds) at the configured charge current (30A) but it then switches to float when the battery reaches approximately 13.9 volts. And it's using 13.3 volts for its float voltage where it stays indefinitely.


It's as if the configured absorption, float and storage voltages have no meaning. I've for example tried to set the float and storage voltages to 14.3 volts but the effect is the same. It goes from bulk to float using 13.3 volts.

orion xs
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bomax182 avatar image bomax182 commented ·

Same issue I reported here (before seeing your topic): https://victron.discourse.group/t/orion-xs-not-charging/418

Factory reset fixed it for me as well. Disappointing to see Victron has been aware of this bug for over a month and has not prioritized fixing it.

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3 Answers
rkapsi avatar image
rkapsi answered ·

To whom it may concern. The problem fixed itself after doing a factory reset.

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xenorg avatar image
xenorg answered ·

I have the same issue, suddenly it will go to float after ~20 seconds of bulk, even though the battery has only reached ~13.8v (and absorbtion is configured for 14.2v), and then will attempts to float at 13.3v, when the float voltage is configured to 13.5v. DVCC is set to off on my cerbo gx. I tried powering off the whole system to reboot it, but no change.

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niels-mobers avatar image
niels-mobers answered ·

Do you have a BMS connected/configured?

See bold text below taken from the manual, maybe this is what's happening in you application.

Error 67 - BMS Connection lost

  • This error shows when the charger is configured to be controlled by a BMS but does not receive any BMS control messages.

  • In that situation; the charger stops charging by reducing its output voltage to the battery base voltage (12 V). This is a safety mechanism, and the reason for still enabling the output is to allow a system to self-recover from a low battery voltage situation.

  • This error is only shown when the device is ready to initiate charging, not during “off” state. In case there is a permanent problem, the error will appear when willing to charge and clear when in “off” state, and so forth.

  • If the connection is lost, the charger will lower the output voltage to the base level 15 seconds after the loss. However, the error is displayed after 3 minutes to give the BMS time to reconnect and to avoid excessive error notifications.

  • In the VictronConnect app, the change to base voltage manifests as a transition from bulk directly to float mode. Once communication is re-established, the charger will return to bulk mode.

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rkapsi avatar image rkapsi commented ·

Sorry, I didn't see this question. The LiFePO4 Starter Battery (Super-B Andrena) has no BMS communication interface. An explicit factory reset (of the Orion XS) and re-applying the (exact same) configuration values fixed the problem.

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bomax182 avatar image bomax182 commented ·

Yes, I think this is exactly what's happening. Unfortunately in my case the error/alarm never occurred.

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