question

jhullinger avatar image
jhullinger asked

Boat Alternator with DC-DC Buck Boost or Orion

Hey All,

Planning an install on my boat with some Victron Lithium Superpacks and a Multi Plus. The batteries would primarily get charged with shore power or generator going into the Multi (the transfer happens at a switch panel before the multi). I'm good with those parts. Where I get a little fuzzy is on the alternator. While I'm underway I would like to get at least some charge out of the alternator. It would be charging both the Superpacks and an AGM engine battery. Right now they are connected to the alternator through a fairly old isolator. I've looked into the Balmar regulators to do the voltage regulation on the alternator. Very slick but I would love to avoid installing one if possible. Would it work to put a buck-boost or Orion between the alternator output from the isolator and the Superpacks and let that handle the voltage regulation? From the Victron documentation it seems like that would work but what I don't know is what happens when the multi starts charging at the same time and if this is a problem (connected to shore power or running the generator while the engine is running). I could have the multi trigger the buck boost to disconnect using the relay contacts but would that trigger a load dump on the alternator? Or is that not an issue since the AGM battery would still be connected. Open to any thoughts or if I need to go another direction with this.

orion-tr smart
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2 Answers
hoeken avatar image
hoeken answered ·

Check out the Orion-tr smart. I installed one between my starter agm / alternator and my lithium bank. It does exactly what you are asking about: https://www.victronenergy.com/upload/documents/Datasheet-Orion-Tr-Smart-DC-DC-chargers-non-isolated-360-400W-EN.pdf

With this, you should probably ditch the old isolator and wire it up as they show in that diagram in the datasheet. Works great.

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randy-putnam avatar image
randy-putnam answered ·

Yep. What hoeken did, I also did. Orion smart 12-12/30 between my 70A “stupid” alternator and single FLA engine battery and 2 100AH Battle Born LFP house bank wired in parallel. I removed the older Blue Seas ACR which I’d used when the engine and house banks were all FLA. The house bank is also charged via 340W solar panels via 100/30 smart MPPT and, if necessary, an IP67 wired into the AC shore power circuit. The Orion Smart works well underway and the solar array handles everything while at anchor (assuming the sun is shining).

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Up to 8 attachments (including images) can be used with a maximum of 190.8 MiB each and 286.6 MiB total.