Starting vith a half charged battery.

[Sprinter 1 cup]

So I got input victron b2b and solar charger. Now added a smart shunt .
Nither input has got battery a100amp relion to 14volts so the smart shunt when installed last week, I set settings to 40 % in battery left. Not 100% as default.so uncharged!
Question can the smart shunt stop chargeing the battery ? It says as pic battery is 100 % at only 13 volts not 14.2 v so my thinking is it not fully charged.
1cup is solar
2cup is b2b
3cup is shunt

 

[MarkJ]

Question can the smart shunt stop chargeing the battery ?

No. The smart shunt is passive and monitors what it thinks is going on. The batteries and chargers work out between them when to charge or not.
That's my understanding anyway

 

[Nabsim]

Yes that’s what I think as well Mark. I always get a mains chargers on my bank for 24/48 hours before I treat them as 100% charged. Had them out last week while I was doing some work in the van and gave them a good charge in the house

 

[trevskoda]

Yes that’s what I think as well Mark. I always get a mains chargers on my bank for 24/48 hours before I treat them as 100% charged. Had them out last week while I was doing some work in the van and gave them a good charge in the house

Why dont you fit a built in smart charger with a outside charge plug point.

 

[Nabsim]

Why dont you fit a built in smart charger with a outside charge plug point.

I have 2 x Victron 30a chargers in the van Trev but van is on the road outside at the moment while I have been working on it, trailing lead across the path is a no no. I did bring both the chargers in to the house though lol

In other circumstances though I would do exactly what you suggest, book a night or two on a campsite with EHU and take advantage of all facilities while I get fully charged. Because of places that were closing shower blocks and facilities though I think I only spent 4 days this year on a site and that had no facilities. Not bad for ten months in the van huh

Well I am forgetting I went to the Kelso meet for a few days, I didn’t get hook up but did empty cassette and rubbish so I guess that’s like a site.

Should get my EBL fitted back in today and hopefully be ready for the off again tomorrow

 

[trevskoda]

Yes street charging can be a bu--er for many, I'm lucky in that respect.

 

[Wobby1]

So I got input victron b2b and solar charger. Now added a smart shunt .
Nither input has got battery a100amp relion to 14volts so the smart shunt when installed last week, I set settings to 40 % in battery left. Not 100% as default.so uncharged!
Question can the smart shunt stop chargeing the battery ? It says as pic battery is 100 % at only 13 volts not 14.2 v so my thinking is it not fully charged.
1cup is solar
2cup is b2b
3cup is shunt

A smart shunt, if fitted correctly! Calculates how many amps go in and come out of the battery, but to do this the battery needs first to be fully charged up. I’d charge it for 24 Hours with no load on it then if it’s lead acid you need to set the shunt discharge floor to a max of 50% I’d be more inclined to set it to 45% or if as in my case it’s lithium you can set to 95%. The other very important thing is there should be just one N connection to the battery and that’s from the shunt all other N connections should be on the other side of the shunt. The shunt in its self doesn’t control the charge in any way shape or form it just reports on what’s happening.

 

[Sprinter 1 cup]

Yes thanks but the b2b got it charged up and the shunt aways say100% . But run for a few days and it did drop down to 45% so its still need a full charge
Till last night I changed setting @ misc to DC Energy Meter now back to 100% lol ! ....

 

[MarkJ]

if it’s lead acid you need to set the shunt to a max of 50%

Why's that? I've set mine to 100% when I'm confident the batteries are full.

 

[SquirrellCook]

The victron BMV's do take a while to get to grips with unless your name is wildebus You have to tell them the battery capacity you think they have, and also how much of that you can use. Then it gets much more complicated.

I do wonder about what is displayed. Actual capacity or what you can use?

 

[wildebus]

The victron BMV's do take a while to get to grips with unless your name is wildebus You have to tell them the battery capacity you think they have, and also how much of that you can use. Then it gets much more complicated.

I do wonder about what is displayed. Actual capacity or what you can use?

Ref what is displayed ....
On the main display you get a "Time Remaining" field. This only appears with a number when you are not on charge (I turned the charger off on mine to get a number on mine for the screenshot)

This value is calculated based on a couple of entries in the settings - shown below

The Discharge floor (this is the maximum Depth of Discharge you want to take your batteries down to. So for the basic Lead Acid battery with the archetypal "don't go below 50%", you would set the Discharge floor to 50%). Mine I have set to 25% as it is a combination of Lead-Carbon and Lithium, so an agregate 25% discharge is fine (for me).
The Time-to-go-averaging period is used to work out the average current used over the time set (the default is 3 minutes. I set mine to 10 minutes).
So basically the maths would be the available AmpHours left above the discharge floor, averaged out based on the consumption over the Time-to-go time.
So in my case, it would be Available AH (300AH (75% of 400AH) - 0.1Ah), averaged over the Ah taken in the last 10 minutes, making a calculation of 8 Days 10 Hours.

How useful it is I don't actually know as I don't use this personally. I can imagine it could be useful for someone who tends to have fairly consistant power draws?

There is another annoying 'feature' in the BMV which means if you use decide to control the Relay with SOC values, the lower SOC value is used as the Discharge Floor. If you use that to control a generator to auto-start and charge the battery, fine, but I have used to relay to turn on things like the Water Heater when the batteries are pretty full - so my Discharge Floor ended up being something like 90% rather than 50% or 25%, and the Time-to-go ends by being very short as it is just something like 10% of the battery before the BMV warns you.

PS. this doesn't actually DO anything in terms of turning off power when you hit the thresholds. you can setup an audible or visual alarm, but it won't disconnect anything.

 

[Sprinter 1 cup]

Yes thanks but the b2b got it charged up and the shunt aways say100% . But run for a few days and it did drop down to 45% while at preston over the new year. so its still need a full charge . So need a charger
Till last night I changed setting @ misc to DC Energy Meter now back to 100% lol ! ....
Still need some tweaking, well a lot .

 

[Wobby1]

Why's that? I've set mine to 100% when I'm confident the batteries are full.

Lead acid can only be safely drained to 50% of its capacity unlike lithium that you can drain to near 100%. If you set the shunt discharge floor on a lead acid battery to 100 % at the point when the reading is at 50% you’ll have reached it depletion. That’s not a problem if you realise that’s the case but it’s a false situation, however if the shunts set to 50% when the reading on the meter or app depending, what you’ve setup, say you‘ve for example got 30% left that how much safe useable energy you know is left in the lead acid battery before you get to the point of damaging it.

 

[Wobby1]

Why's that? I've set mine to 100% when I'm confident the batteries are full.

This is a link to the Victron shunt, but it applies to all makes of shunt the reason you set in the parameters at 50% when the lead acid batt is full is because it’s not wise to drain the battery beyond 50%. basically 100amp battery has a useable 50amps max so from that to full is what your working with so really you need to know what percentage of useable battery is left. On the voltage meter system that goes by the voltage in the battery to reveal its capacity when the meter says your at empty the battery still has in this example 50amp that can’t be use. It’s just how lead acid batteries work. Unlike Lithium that can be drained without damage to almost 5% of total capacity. A 100 amp lithium has a useable 95amps
www.victronenergy.com/media/pg/SmartShunt/en/all-features-and-settings.html[/URL]

 

[Wobby1]

Ref what is displayed ....
On the main display you get a "Time Remaining" field. This only appears with a number when you are not on charge (I turned the charger off on mine to get a number on mine for the screenshot)
View attachment 4943

This value is calculated based on a couple of entries in the settings - shown below
View attachment 4944
The Discharge floor (this is the maximum Depth of Discharge you want to take your batteries down to. So for the basic Lead Acid battery with the archetypal "don't go below 50%", you would set the Discharge floor to 50%). Mine I have set to 25% as it is a combination of Lead-Carbon and Lithium, so an agregate 25% discharge is fine (for me).
The Time-to-go-averaging period is used to work out the average current used over the time set (the default is 3 minutes. I set mine to 10 minutes).
So basically the maths would be the available AmpHours left above the discharge floor, averaged out based on the consumption over the Time-to-go time.
So in my case, it would be Available AH (300AH (75% of 400AH) - 0.1Ah), averaged over the Ah taken in the last 10 minutes, making a calculation of 8 Days 10 Hours.

How useful it is I don't actually know as I don't use this personally. I can imagine it could be useful for someone who tends to have fairly consistant power draws?

There is another annoying 'feature' in the BMV which means if you use decide to control the Relay with SOC values, the lower SOC value is used as the Discharge Floor. If you use that to control a generator to auto-start and charge the battery, fine, but I have used to relay to turn on things like the Water Heater when the batteries are pretty full - so my Discharge Floor ended up being something like 90% rather than 50% or 25%, and the Time-to-go ends by being very short as it is just something like 10% of the battery before the BMV warns you.

PS. this doesn't actually DO anything in terms of turning off power when you hit the thresholds. you can setup an audible or visual alarm, but it won't disconnect anything.

I think this is a better explanation of the shunt settings than I gave in so much as it refers to the discharge floor set to 50% on a lead acid battery and to set the battery state of charge to 100% after it’s been fully charged up.

 

[Sprinter 1 cup]

Has my solar controller a temp sensor / to turn off when on lithium settings ? ?. Its the victron orian 100/30
As over the last week it's reached 0 degrees out side van and it should cut out a 5 degrees shut down temp in app settings.
But no notifications on app !. Can it be recorded without the bmv as I only have blue tooth.

 

[wildebus]

Has my solar controller a temp sensor / to turn off when on lithium settings ? ?. Its the victron orian 100/30
As over the last week it's reached 0 degrees out side van and it should cut out a 5 degrees shut down temp in app settings.
But no notifications on app !. Can it be recorded without the bmv as I only have blue tooth.

the Low Temp Cutoff is disabled until you select LiFePO4 Battery Type, at which point it is enabled automatically and set at 5C.

However ... When you click on the "Low temperature cut-off" entry, you get an further information window popup (see attached screenshot). This says that that field is only in operation when you have a shared temperature, so a standalone Solar Controller would not be able to use that feature.

I am guessing this is a deliberate limitation for the following reason... The Victron MPPT Controller has a built-in Temp Sensor, but there are two issues with it which could be key

1. The controller will likely not be right next to the Battery, so the temp it is reading will not be the same as the battery itself (could be higher, could be lower), so relying on that reading would be unreliable
2. The temperature is only read once, at the point the controller first wakes up in the morning and that temperature is used throughout the day until the controller turns off for at least an hour and then wakes up again and a new temperature is read at that time.
   Typicall the lowest temp would be at the start of the day, so if the temp read was under 5C (the default setting), the charger would probably end up being disabled for the entire day.

By using a BMV-7x2 SOC Monitor with a Temp Sensor, or a Smart Battery Sense device on the VE.Smart Network, you could address 1. by having the sensor physically on the battery box, and address 2. as when the MPPT has access to either of these, the temperature is updated in real-time and not just once a day.

 

[Sprinter 1 cup]

So the lithium setting on charger works as a defined setting but cant stop cold charging when it needs it ! ?. So I need to just think it's not a stand alone lithium charger and won't protect from cold as Intended.
relion battery is justt unlucky as it was a front runner back befor orion

 

[wildebus]

getting a Victron SBS would be a worthwhile purchase I think as even if you were able to use the MPPT to disable charging, it would be guesswork to when that would be shut off if you wanted to stop the charger
The Relion Battery will have a BMS that shuts charging down anyway so I would not worry about that setting.