Hello,
I have the following situation: I made a camper with a new housebattery, 300A lithium. I wanted to charge it with the engine of the car, so I bought the victron orion-TR 12/12 30A (360W isolated). I connected the car battery with the orion but it does not seem to work. Have I bought the wrong product? Or am I missing something?
That is not quite the product that you were after. The Orion-Tr Smart DC-DC Charger is more suited for your needs.
It's not a complete loss though, if you adjust the output Voltage of your current unit to whatever the Float Voltage of your lithium battery is, then it will do a good portion of the charge up to that Voltage. Make sure to disconnect anything at the output before adjusting the Voltage. Reconnect once set.
For full charger capability you really need the product I mentioned above.
I got it working, but ran into a problem:
like I said, the housebattery is connected to the startbattery via the orion. Now, if the orion is "off", the voltage on the startbattery is around 14,3. Then I turn on the orion and that voltage drops to around 13,7. When I measure the input on the orion, it is around 12,7. Output on the orion is 13,4, the voltage of the housebattery at this time.
How do I get the inputvoltage up? Only then I can accuratly measure the 13,6 that I want it to charge on
@Mabaert, what gauge and type of wire are you running from your start battery to the Orion, and what brand of fuse or breaker is protecting that circuit, and what is the approximate distance between the start battery and the Orion?
Excessive voltage drop is usually caused by either incorrect wire type, incorrect wire gauge for the current and/or distance, or off-brand fuses or breakers that are cheaply made and have high internal resistance... or all of the above.
well, there must be a mistake somewhere. The used wire from startengine to orion is 16mm2. Distance is about 5meters one way, so 10 for negative en positive cable. Fuses are from a reputable company...
I did some more tests while driving, since the last test was only when idling. The result: The inputvoltage stays beneath 13,6V. The outputvoltage got up to 13,38V, so it's better. But that's with the voltageregulator all the way open, so 15V. I have no way to precisely adjust it to max 13,5, the maximum output that I want. But I find it very strange that I can't get the inputvoltage up.
By the way, during the test the orion got seriously hot, but I read that's fairly normal. But it also blew the 40A fuse between the startbattery and the orion. I thought that the whole point of the orion it to limit the amperage to 30? I replaced it with a 60A fuse and that seems to be holding. But still, there must be something wrong with my setup right?
@Justin Cook - Bay Marine Supply USA
i have the exact same scenario... i am very disappointed about that, i Purchase
O have more voltage on my gauge 2 before the Dc-dc :-(
a Victron to have quality. Does this product is mature?
Hi @Fenix,
To clarify, what do you mean by "the exact same scenario"?
The above user purchased an Orion-TR DC-DC Converter, rather than the proper Orion-Tr Smart DC-DC Charger, and has too small of gauge wires for the length of run from source battery to Orion, so between the incorrect product and insufficient wiring, that the Orion is struggling is to be expected.
Hello
i have a purchase a victron orion-tr smart 12/12-30a
here is my set-up
Truck with a Camper
Truck Batteries is link to the 2 Battlborn with a gauge 2 , connect via an anderson plug
60Amp fuse
connect to the Orion 6 inch
then the Orion Connect to the battery 12inch
Any help would be appreciated because i am not to happy with this
Until they update the firmware to fix some voltage detection bugs and include Smart BatterySense, this product is pretty dangerous to have on my LiFePO4 battery system
Here are some things I did that helped improve my reliability with this unit
- run 10 awg or larger wire directly to your car alternator
- run a separate wire from your car for switched power (normal car trailers do not include switch 12v) and wire this wire up to your Orion remote on-off circut
- do not use and disable the in software engine shutdown detection, I found it very unreliable, and when it does work, it will reduce your total possible wattage you can consume to charge your battery
With all of the above my system is allot better but beware of the following
- sometime the device freezes and refuses to connect via bluetooth or show proper status (but i can tell from my smart shunt that its actually still charging)
- Without Battery Sense and smart network you risk damaging you batteries under low temperatures
Goodluck
Thanks for the response. I’ll look into maybe switching for the Orion smart. But in case the store doesn’t accept, can I do harm to my battery with this? The float charge is about 14,6, so if I turn the voltage on the Orion to max (15V), then it should work to charge it quite full? Accept for the bluetooth, are there any important options for lithiumbattery that come with the Orion smart that I will be missing?
Definitely don’t set it as high as 14.6V for float. You will kill your lithium battery. You want 13.5V for lithium float. The top half of the lithium battery will charge slowly, but once charged it will do a decent job keeping up.
Wkirby is correct, you will want the dc-dc charger.
Okay, I asked the store and they won’t take it back. So this is what I have to work with! So, how do I make this work best. Right now it is connected like this: from the startbattery to the Orion (with fuse) and from there to the negative and positive busbars (with fuse) where the housebattery is connected to. But that doesn’t work. The on/off light never lights up. Do I have to connect it straight to the housebattery instead?
