MV Intrigue is a 1985 31' Tung Hwa Senator Trawler. Join us on our journey as we repair and upgrade her getting her ready to cruise the Gulf coast of Florida and beyond. This is generally a DIY channel for the purposes of sharing information and knowledge.
Thanks! A quick question: would you recommend still having an external battery monitor such as the SmartShunt, or can the batteries and Victron comms provide that data? Thanks again, very informative video.
I have a couple older tractors with points distributor. Soon I'm gonna ad a couple magnets to the front pully , and use CDI for the ignition on them. 3000 RPM tachs are not very expensive. Can I simply add a haul effect sensor, and wire it off of it , and set the tach for a 4 cylinder? You explained the reason for the extra thingie because its a tach made for the alternator. When everything is adjusted right the points work fine , but in the most inopportune time they come out of adjustment and you're in the dark. Trying to adjust them.
Probably. As long as the tach is adjustable. The need for the other thingy is because the alernator signal is not even close to what a typical motor is.
Our TR-1 won't power up. Might be the power on button and I have a replacement ordered. If not that and the board is bad I will have to consider replacing with Reactor 40. Is the GHC 50 whatever really necessary? I would prefer to not use it and do as normal similar to TR-1.
Is it possible to connect the RJ45 labeled "Victron" on the 12V 460Ah battery directly to one of the two VE.Bus RJ45's on the Victron MultiPlus-II and have the battery to control the charge settings, or do you need the Cerbo GX?
This video is now somewhat old. Epoch now includes the cables on thier harness when they ship all batteries. If you didnt get one...just call them and they will send it out. Dont leave a message...just keep calling until someone picks up.
Quick question. In my current setup I have two large batteries. You mentioned Positive and Negatives being the same length. The installer made the round trip the same based on orientation. Meaning one of my positive cables is the same length as my one of my negative cables and the other battery is the opposite. When I asked about it he said it is the round trip length of cable in total. Is this a good method or should I buy some more cable and change it. All cabling goes to common busbars for positive and negatives and then all cabling to the inverters are exactly the same length on both sides of the equation.
Actually I think that probably fine. If you draw a decent sized load just look at the app and make sure amps relatively equal in thier load sharing. They will never be perfect...but if they are close thats good enough. For instance one batt pulling 60 amps and the other 61 amps...close enough.
TY, One other question if you don't mind. I am full-time and will be swapping these out for my existing batteries. The manual says do not connect them to my system until they are fully charged. Is this really necessary or as long as I stay on shore power until they are full charged I should be fine? (minimal 12 VDC draw) I have 2 multiplus and 2100 watts of solar and thought they would do the best job bringing them up to charge especially connected to the Cerbo. Thoughts?
@@rjoustra1150 If your in parallel its not all that critical. Series it is super critical. If you can turn the charge amps down a bit to say....20 amps per batt for the last 5% that would be good. But as long as you use the 13.9 absorb and 13.5 float you will be ok.
First video from you, high quality with proper level of details. Can't wait to see your watch list. I am sure I will find very relevant videos for my trawler! Thanks, subscription added. You should have way more subscribers!
Thanks Daniel. Much appreciated. These videos are to hopefully help the newer boat owners navigate some of the issues you may encounter with owning a larger boat. It can get quite expensive if you have to pay someone to do all your Mx. You can save thousands every year by learning basics and tackling these jobs.
Great Video. Question for you, If you have the host battery Victron Comm enabled and communicating with the Victron system, does the slave batteries need to be Victron Comm enabled as well or can I just purchase the non victron comm batteries for the Slave units?
I called Epoch and got the answer to my question. If you're going to use Alternator Charging for the batteries then you must use the Marine Batteries with the Victron Comms! Thanks for the discount code. It saved me $549
@@kendallartusi Be sure to set all your chargers parameters to 13.8 bulk/absorb voltage and 13.4 or 13.5 float. If doing altenator charging I recomend uding the Victron Orion 50 amp DC to DC charger. If you want to direct charge the Epochs from the alternator you really should use something like the Wakespeed 500 or the Arco Zues external regulators to ensure you dont overcharge the batteries causing a charge mosfet disconnect that will cause voltage spike. You would set the external alternator regulators to the same 13.8 bulk/absorb and 13.5 float.
I'm a cheap charley when I can. I did my research and still bought the Sailrite sewing machine, now I'll definitely buy the Sailrite pully. Thanks for the video
First current leaks, now rain leaks! The man has his priorities straight 😉 Nice video. The alternator cooling design and strategy would make a good video. I assume with the dcdc charger, you are keeping the internally regulated alternator. Folks could learn from how you are designing the system to manage heat and charging. Explaining your use-case vs how others (or future you) may have different use-cases and might do things differently.
Good idea Jim. I will do that. I have the Balmar 100 amp alternator and MC618 external regulator with temp sensor on the alternator. But with the 50 amp dc2dc charger the alternator of course will get a bigger workout for greater length of time. And of course I would prefer it not to get derated from excessive heat. You can throttle current on the Orion 50 amp dc2dc and there is also the " belt manager" on the Balmar mc618 if needed, plus the cooling from the blower. Between all that, tweaking and setting, I should be able to put out the full 50 amps or very close into the lithium bank while underway. I would be happy with that. It takes me 3 to 4 hours to get anywhere 😂 so that a few hundred amp hours.
I have been meaning to do that test. And I will at some point. The problem is that to run a physical distance test takes HOURS..lol. Its like going on a road trip. Bring some drinks and some snacks, the Garmin GPS to track actual distance and set out for half a day. When I have the time I will try to get that done. But the battery is still performing beautifully and I would expect about 45 miles out of it. Give or take.
Unfortunately it does not differentiate between giving away energy into the network and loading my battery. Have a Multiplus 2 + 14 kWh battery + Fronius Symo 6 + EM24 to get the numbers for network export/import. Also on the weekend it didn't show anything.
13.8V is not 99.X% SOC. 3.45Vpc is about 95%'ish. I wouldn't charge any less than 3.45V with the occasional 3.50V since 3.45V is the best start balance voltage where voltage and SOC actually have some kind of relationship. 13.6V is too low and you could definitely end up with less Ah's available over time. Keeping LiFePO4 near 100% SOC is nowhere near as bad as keeping cobalt based Lithium Ion near 100%. For cobalt based chemistries it is definitely what I would consider in the top 5 degradation factors (heat being #1). Your LiFePO4 cells should rest between 3.35 and 3.45 anyways depending on the size of the cell. This big 460Ah battery (if made out of 230Ah cells) is probably going to rest at 3.35 to 3.37 volts per cell. Floating it above this voltage is definitely no bueno but leaving it at 100% or 95% is not going to hurt your cycle life too much. I wouldn't be surprised if most LiFePO4 (so long as it isn't exposed to extreme heat or charged under freezing) will outlive their application or we will have a cheaper more energy dense chemistry by then (10 years for near daily cycling and 20 years for 3 times a week cycling)
More explanation on the video, including further discoveries. As part of the Lithium, Victron install portions of the boat are being rewired and brought up to modern standards. An ELCI was one of those items. So of course I wanted to precheck leakage prior to the ELCI install as not to lock myself out of shore power once installed. The video is not very good and was just what I managed to take while I was in "highly focused" fixing mode since I had serious concerns for the safety of possible divers or other unsafe conditions with 4 amps of leakage. 🤪 After ordering and receiving the Megger leakage clamp meter (specifically designed for this troubleshooting) checking the hot and neutral wires just on the backside of the shore power showed 4 amps of AC leakage. The limit for an ELCI is 30 mA. Several orders of magnitude difference..lol. I then put the clamp around the green ground wire of the shore power plug and it showed 3.7 or so amps. So that confirmed the vast majority of leakage was going out the ground wire. This is why diver never complained in the past. Next step was to go to the shore power pedestal and pull the plug and lay it on the dock. This disconnected the neutral and ground (they are connected somewhere upstream typically). I then went back to the boat and used a regular multimeter set to ohms and put the probes on the white nuetral and green ground put to measure continuity. It measured like .2 ohms. Pretty much tied together. It should have been reading open of Mega ohms, meaning little or no continuity. So at that point its clear the neutral and ground buss where tied together somewhere on the boat. I decided to begin removing the neutral bus wires one by one until there was no longer continuity. I decided to remove the only "add on" wire on the neutral buss that had a cheap crimp. Once that was removed the two busses read many mega ohms, so it was essentially open. I traced that wire to a bungle of three that clearly made up and AC circuit. Traced that to the back of the boat and found it ran into a typical AC receptacle. Opened it up and found the neutral and ground wires swapped. That receptacle was for a fairly new Xantrex battery charger. Reversed the wires and the AC leakage went away and now had under 4mA of AC leakage. Plenty of room for the 30mA ELCI. Also in this area were two AC boat cables that had wire nuts on them. Since I was in the area I was obligated to fix this issue as well. Opened the wire nuts up and of course the wires were good copper, but coated in green corrosion. Ticking time bomb. As I set out to fix these AC wires I discover that BOTH of these AC boat cables ran from the front electrical closet to the rear of the boat near the batteries, connected only to each other!!🤪 So of course I pulled them out all the way to the front and jumpered them to their appropriate busses with short wires of a few inches. Then it dawned on me. There was once an inverter charger located against the back bulkhead near the batteries. The two ac cables were the pass through. And at some time in the past the inverter charger died and the previous owner paid someone (i know who) to fix the issue. That person disconnected the AC cables at the inverter and wire nutted them together and left it dangling. In addition he added a basic Xantrex charger and wired it to the front AC panel, miswiring the outlet for that charger by crossing the neutral and ground. This person who did this work was supposedly a "Marine Electrical Engineer". Old boat wiring like this tells a sad story..lol.
If you have a regular clamp meter yo can do a basic check to see if there is a major problem like mine. Clamp the white and black wire on the backside of SP plug. Then clamp the green wire by itself.
A GFCI circuit would have tripped in this case. If I'm not mistaken, most of the newer marina's have these on their power pedestals. Better to find this now than sitting somewhere away from home port. I'm guessing you have a galvanic isolator which kept your zincs and other drive parts from disintegrating? otherwise, I would expect damage. Good diagnostic work. Thank you.
If that particular plug was gfci It probably would trip. But there was no GFCI and this was a single circuit. No isolator. I have a ton of zincs and they did wear every few months. But because of the nature of the mistake the majority of the stray current was going up the ground wire back to pedestal....thank god.
I answered your question on the Epoch forums (Allen Jones). Yes, the Epoch comms currently only provide a single stage charge profile. Or really a CC then CV but the they essentially stay in absorption at the voltage you program into the DVCC as max voltage.. Which is 13.8. Not ideal/ I turned off the comms and use the Victron profiles now and it works great.
Boat yoga👍👍 Couples edition😉 I’d never film this…too many bleeps and hours of meditation (staring incomprehensibly at unsolvable problems which, a week later, are easy)
Lots of work. I feel your pain. Looking better though. We are getting a lot done on our boat as well. Man I need to get some videos up.. what insulation is that? I'd like to redo my engine room insulation
Its just a foam backed insulation. Its not really sound deadening but it does keep all the old soundproofing from falling into the bilge and makes the space a bit cleaner. You can get various ones on Amazon very cheap. You need to catch up on the videos! LOL. amzn.to/3Ruu0ot
Great video but I’m baffled as to why you would just get rid of a perfectly fine set of batteries. Why not ride it until you have a sign of a problem and then pull the trigger?
Because three batteries wired in series, one will always eventually get out of sync with the others. You could use an external balancer but that's just more cost and maintenance. Once the batteries are out of sync, steps will be required to bring them back in sync. None of that is too big a deal, but I dont want to tinker with my golf cart....at all. I have enough projects to deal with..lol. When you go to a single battery, whether 36 volt of 48 volt, all the balancing will be done internally by the BMS. With the Dakotas I got stranded before I figured out the series imbalance issues. Then after that I was always checking each battery individually with a meter to check on voltage of each battery after charge. With the Epoch...I havent looked at anything. Just plug it in.
I see. Good points. One other question. I have a local golf cart dealer who claims that he has avoided Lithium batteries due to the upheaval happening in that technology and the idea that most companies won’t be around long enough to honor the warranty they provide. Do you know how long Epoch has been in the business?
Would be more interested in seeing how each works, does one do a better job than the other or work about the same regardless of machining quality difference?
No teflon washer on this install. The thread sealer prevents leakage through the threads and the gasket seals the rest. Its been in place for several months with no leaks.
fascinating. im in awe of how you get non victron batteries to be read by the cerbo gx. it would be a great help to me if you could show how its done please.
No way that heat gun is pulling 34 amps. Your volt meter is off somehow. 14 amps max on a heat gun on full maybe even 12 amps. Check your heat gun on a amp clamp or volt meter and compare it to your golf cart meter
Good afternoon, I want to use these batteries in series for 48 volts for a Torqeedo electric outboard that draws 250 amps continuous. Do you think these batteries would handle that amp draw consistently without issues?
That's quite an undertaking. They might. But wiring 12 volt batteries in series to operate at 48 volts have issues all thier own. Imo it would be best to find a 48volt battery and then parallel them. You can parallel them until the amp rating is well above your needed range.
Says 200A max discharge for 60 seconds. Does it have a higher spike allowance over that for short duration? Just wondering for acceleration on a hill, or under heavy load. Don’t need the sustained power, but don’t want to overload and error out.
Yes it does. I have hit 200 before and never had a trip. However if you are going to mod your cart with big motors and big controllers there may be better options. Really ath that point youd want to upgrade to 48v or 72 volt.
The first part of the video is for a single battery as you can see it reports to Cerbo fine. Essentially the dips can stay the way they came from the factory.
