question

rallyestyle avatar image
rallyestyle asked

Does the recommended charge current of a battery increase if combined in parallel?

Hello all.


I am currently in the process of designing a battery system for a camper van conversion and am looking at using 3 x 90Ah Lithium batteries connected in parallel. This may be a bit of a newbie question but im struggling to find an answer anywhere on the old interweb...


Does the recommended charge current of a battery increase if combined in parallel?


For example for a standard Victron Lithium 90Ah battery the recommended charge current is equal to or less than 45A, if i were to use the three batteries as suggested above could i increase this recommended charge current to 135A (3 x 45A)?


Thanks all for the help.


Tom

charge current limit
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4 Answers
JohnC avatar image
JohnC answered ·

Hi Tom. Yes, essentially that's how it works.

Paralleling batts comes with issues though, And while Li's have bms to help avoid those, you wouldn't want to skimp on the kit.

Perhaps one of the Li guys could help you with that if you cough the dirty details of your system. 135A is big grunt for a campervan. Boggles my mind.. :)

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rallyestyle avatar image
rallyestyle answered ·

@JohnC


Hi John. Thanks for the speedy answer, very helpful.

It's likely i won't be able to provide 135A to charge the batteries, nor require such grunt hopefully, but i just wanted to make sure if i exceeded the the 45A recommended charge current for a single 90Ah Li battery (while it is part of a parallel bank of three 90Ah batteries ) there wouldn't be any problems.

Happy to divulge on the sort of system im going for although i do realise some of it goes against best practice :)

As a bit of background i will be using two different solar panels, one LG and one Panasonic, this is purely to do with available dimensions as there is minimal space with which to install on the custom design roof rack. With this in mind the main components of the setup that im looking at is as follows:


- 1 x LG 370W Solar Panel

- 1 x Panasonic 245W Solar Panel

- 1 x VictronSmartSolar 100/30 Charge Controller (for the LG)

- 1 x VictronSmartSolar 100/20 Charge Controller (for the Panasonic)

- 3 x 90Ah Victron Lithium Ion Batteries (270Ah total)

- 1 x Victron MultiPlus Compact 12/2000/80 Charger/Inverter

- 1 x Victron 50A Buck-Boost DC/DC Converter - 12/24V (A requirement i believe if the base van will have a smart alternator)

- 1 x Victron VE BUS BMS

- 1 x Victron Battery Protect


On top of these bits i have been advised to go with the following:


- 1 x Victron BMV712 (if i where to use an alternate battery monitor could i get rid of this? I could use the bluetooth feature of the charge controllers and batteries to get info on my phone if the alternate battery monitor wasn't sufficient right?)

- 1 x Victron Battery Protect 12/24V-220A (is 220A a little high for what i will be looking at, would i be better going for a 65A instead?)

- 1 x Victron Orion DC-DC converter. 12v input, 12v output. 360W. (This would be used to power the 12v loads, is it required for a simple setup though?)

- 1 x Victron Cyrix-Li-Charge 12/24V-120A. (Not exactly sure where this fits in, having read up on it i would have thought a Cyrix-Li-Load might be better suited, im certainly no expert though).


So that's the main components of the system, feel free to comment away with good or bad thoughts. I might add im happy to use a single 300Ah Li battery if it is a better choice, have only gone for 3 x 90Ah as it will give me the opportunity to add to the bank if i need more power perhaps.

Id like to keep the system as simple as possible, i have seen this setup diagram am am wondering if something similar (minus the DC distribution 24V part) would be a better way of doing things, in truth im not even sure how some of the bits i have been quoted for would be linked up to work, i know a lot of the Victron stuff has secondary uses so it's not always how it might look.


Thanks for any help.





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JohnC avatar image
JohnC answered ·

Yeh Tom. You must have dressed in your best suit and driven your Rolls Royce in to get that advice, then told the salesman you want every piece of the best kit known to mankind. Not that the advice is bad, cos it's all good kit, but your system is quite smallish and the question is whether you need it all. But you know that..

There's a lot of stuff in your list(s) that I'd like, but can't justify. Like I don't really need it, nor prepared to spend for that.

I'm reluctant to recommend or dissuade you from anything, but the odd suspicion you've expressed seem fair to me too.

Copout? Yeh, call it that if you will. You've done well to provide the detail of where you're heading, but your preferences/needs are the most important thing.

So consider this a bump. Maybe in the meantime lookee here to see what others have done: https://www.victronenergy.com/blog/?s=camper+van Not sure whether that link will work with my 'camper van' search request, but you can do that if it doesn't. There was a blogpost recently with a Victron display van fitted out extensively, but I can't seem to find it.


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rallyestyle avatar image
rallyestyle answered ·

Thanks John.

I have a pretty decent budget for the conversion which is good but i certainly don't want to be spending money i don't need to. Id like the electrical system to be flexible to the point of running a few power hungry bits of equipment if i need to, simply though i just want to get the power from the solar panels, charge the batteries, and then use that power for basic 12v stuff and the occasional squirt of AC for use by the water heater and a food blender. Charging from the alternator is important but the costs seem to be adding fast enough that i even considered installing a secondary alternator that's not smart if i needed to haha! Im more of a mechanic than an electrician you see, no problem swapping an engine but for the electronics in the van im having to do a lot of reading, not quite as simple as id hoped!

Thanks for the link, i will check it out. I have been following the new Victron videos for their demo van, that looks promising but there wont be a full electrical diagram until the end of the series, hopefully i can wait that longer.

I will update this thread with details of what i go for, hopefully it will help others along the way.

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