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ian-h avatar image
ian-h asked

Default lithium setting on Bluesmart mains charger

Hi

I have a 30A Bluesmart IP22 charger and a fogstar 230Ah underseat battery which will be fitted in my camper. While bench testing I found that the default 14.2V bulk setting would not trigger the battery bms to reach 100% capacity. In fact with successive cycles the capacity after the victron completed its bulk and absorption phases fell by about 2%. After speaking to Fogstar I increased the charger voltage to 14.4V and the battery bms immediately decided it was at 100%. The fogstar guy replicated the problem with a 10A victron charger. His bms reset with the voltage increased to 14.3V.

My question is:

Has anyone else here seen this problem with Victron chargers and lithium batteries, Fogstar or other makes? I've asked in a couple of other forums and had a couple of others who have, one Fogstar and one another make. When I emailed Victron the response was that Fogstar are not supported so it's not a Victron problem, but I should look here.

Ian

bluesmart ip22
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2 Answers
Alexandra avatar image
Alexandra answered ·

@Ian_H

what is the charged voltage of the fogstar? If the charger is not set to charge to that, then obviously the settings are incorrect for the battery.

With the Victron being so flexible in its charge parameters, all it takes is a bit of experimenting with a non supported product

You have met with success in your experiment. Go with that. The charger itself does not check SOC only voltage, I don't see a problem here, only that the settings were not quite correct in the begining. Maybe just the way the BMS used works, who knows? Manufacturer of the BMS or Fogstar should, not Victron.

If the BMS did not shut down in protection and the BMS triggered it's 100% SOC as you wanted it to. All is good. The other option is to increase absorption time?

Edited. Not had a problem with any of the 12v lithiums we use.

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ian-h avatar image ian-h commented ·
Hi Alexandra

Thanks for the reply. In my ignorance (I am a beginner here) I assumed that all lithium cell were the same voltage and hence the bms systems would work off the same voltages. I believe the Fogstars use a JK bms. Having spent what to me is a lot of money I am just wanting to be sure things are right. As Fogstar supply Victron gear, sell batteries with Victron integration and currently recommend using the default Victron settings, I was a bit concerned that they didn't work for me. Fogstar have updated me again today and are still looking into it themselves. I wanted to see what the experience on this forum had been.

Thanks again

Ian

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Alexandra avatar image Alexandra ♦ ian-h commented ·

Yeah, I also learned quickly that they batteries don't all behave how they say on the box either.

Sometimes a shift up or down of about 0.2v is the way. I know the brand of BMS Fogstar uses. Have dabbled a bit with them. You can customize JK a bit, so the charger needs to match the customisation.

I think you have shown what alot of people lack - a bit of logical thinking anyway.

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Nev avatar image
Nev answered ·

Interesting topic.

We have a 9 year old 4 cell 300Ah Sinopoly LiFePO4 and 1 year old 4 cell 280Ah EVE LiFePO4 battery packs in our RV.


Whether charging at 1 or 80A both the 500A Victron SmartShunt and 400A Junctek battery monitors report 100% SOC when the battery terminal reach 14.1V. Absorption mode adds nothing extra.

Our Victron 30A IP22 charger is accordingly set to 14.1V. Any higher achieves nothing for either battery. Charging at 30A from 14.1 to 14.6V takes about 30 seconds and adds no useful extra capacity.

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