Hi all,
Looking for a charger that
- will talk to a cerbo gx and accept commands to throttle down/stop charge
- failing that one that will take voltage from a BMV and can completely stop charging at a certain voltage
- is 110v
- not really bothered about a small charge amount, even 30amps would probably be fine. Most important to me is the ability of the cerbo to control it.
Thanks! (Also please don't suggest a multiplus, it won't really work for me)
Can you elaborate on why a multiplus won't work?
Multiplex won't work for several reasons
- I used a dual bus system with a battery protect as both a HVC and LVC and I can't use those with the multiplus attached to one of the buses
- from the sounds of it you can't pass through AC without having the charger on, which I don't want - I prefer to let my lifepo4 batts cycle on my solar, only charging before I leave the dock
- I also don't like the fact that if it breaks then you lose all AC
- space wise it's hard to fit in my compartment compared to two smaller devices
I am not sure what your battery protect setup is.
You can still use a battery protect in a system with a multiplus, the multiplus just has to be wired directly to the battery and will use its own settings to protect the battery and your battery protect is used for everything else.
You can turn the charger off with an external switch but realistically an LFP battery can sit at 100% all day without any problems. You could just program the multiplus charge voltage lower like 13.6V and the MPPTs to 13.8V but if you have a CAN managed batteries then just don't worry about it.
This is the case using an inverter, if it breaks then you lose all AC. Normally you would just install an transfer switch to bypass the inverter but this is no diffrent to not using the multiplus for charging.
The only charge that might work is the Skylla-IP65 but it isn't that small.
https://www.victronenergy.com/chargers/skylla-ip65
All the Victron Chargers that Have Canbus ie Skyla-I range and Skylla IP65 - look on there data sheets If they have CanBus or VE.bus or VE.direct then they can connect to the cerbo or any GX unit for that matter
Thanks Paul - so it looks like my only option for a charger that talks the the cerbo is the Skyla? Which is really overkill. That's disappointing.
I'm trying to figure out the same thing. seems Victron really tries to drive us to the charger/inverter combo. i already have an inverter so was hoping not to tear it out.
