With the Victron Energy EasySolar 24V 3000W 70-50A Inverter Charger can I switch between 2 separate battery banks?

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islarh asked Feb 25, '22

With the Victron Energy EasySolar 24V 3000W 70-50A Inverter Charger can I switch between 2 separate battery banks?

We are upgrading our battery bank, but rather than just not using the existing ‘old’ batteries at all there would be an issue with keeping the existing batteries as a sort of "spare" battery bank - basically having a switch between the two battery banks- and if the new battery bank was getting too low we could manually switch to the other bank and utilise that- switching between them also to charge.

our system:

We have a Victron Energy EasySolar 24V 3000W 70-50A Inverter Charger (purchased 2017). We also have A Smart BMV-712 HQ1801TW9VZ. The system has 2x 100Ah 12V iVOLTA Lithium batteries connected in series, and 2000W of solar panels

I don’t yet know the exact specifics of the new battery bank but we are looking to have at least 300Ah total.

Would it be possible to do what I am suggesting above with this system? My concern is if you would have to change all the settings on the Victron EasySolar each time you switched batteries and if this would be too labour intensive or confusing- I wouldn't want to make a mistake and mess up the system. If this is possible what other Victron products might I need to achieve this?

Lithium Battery starter battery virtual switch

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Alexandra ♦ commented · Feb 25, 2022 at 06:03 AM

@islarh@msn.com

It would be easier to answer if we knew the details of both sets of banks. Cannot answer the charge profile question without knowing that.

There a quite a few victron products for connecting two banks together to charge the second one.

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islarh Alexandra ♦ commented · Feb 25, 2022 at 06:24 AM

The old battery bank is 2 x 100Ah VOLTA lithium batteries connected in series- the new battery bank will be at least 300Ah but I don’t know the configuration yet as the electrician has yet to get back to me.

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Answer 1 · 2022-02-25T09:12:05Z

wkirby answered · Feb 25, 2022 at 09:12 AM

The system will never know the state of charge of either of the batteries. Since the system is only expecting one battery it does not have the ability to track how much energy has gone into or out of either one or the other battery as you switch between the two.

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Answer 2 · 2022-02-25T14:21:40Z

David answered · Feb 25, 2022 at 02:21 PM

There are a few ways to do this, but which generally not officially "supported".

In terms of configuration of the charger, if the new battery bank is Lithium as well, you should be able to have a charging regime that is compatible with both old and new batteries, so switching between the two without changing config.

As far as having two separate banks and switching between the two, you could fit a "1+2" isolation switch. This would let you select between Bank 1, Bank 2, have both 1 & 2 connected at the same time, or disconnect both.

Your BMV would get 'confused' when you are switching between the two, but the charger would not care and its charge would be whatever the battery bank connected needed.

I have two Battery Banks in my setup (3 batteries in Bank 1 and currently 1 in Bank 2), and to deal with the BMV question, I actually have dedicated BMV-700s on each bank so I can see precisely what each bank is up to. Because I use the banks connected together generally, I also have a BMV-712 that monitors the entire bank for a overall picture.

HTH.

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