Dear community, I have a twin engine Catamaran for which I’m about to replace my old AGM battery bank by a bank of 6 Superpack 100 Ah - enclosed the drawing of my original installation.
I understood I have to install Orion devices in order to protect both my alternators and the superpacks.
The professional electricians I discuss with do not provide the same answer to the following questions:
1/ the superpack bank will be disconnected to output #2 of both argodiode isolators. The Orion to be installed before the superpack must be connected to a/ output #1 of the argodiode in order to be connected to to the starter battery or b/ directly connected to the alternator at argodiode input?
2/ which Orion to be considered: Orion XS 12-12 50 or Orion TR Smart 12-12 30?
Could you share your answer and the associated rational?
First, Argofet units would be prefered to the Argodiode units due to the lack of volt drop, which does not appear to be compensated for. This would limit charging batteries to full voltage.
It would be better to use an orion converter from each motor, in order to improve charging time & Current, also for redundancy purposes.Which Orion depends on the alternator rating. Chose about 50% of the nominal alternator capacity. Consider also a smart alternator regulator, if the alternators permit this (external volt sensing).
With 2 orions, then the Argoxxx units could be omitted, as the orions can be enabled by engine run detection. The units would then be powered from the Starter battery as:
Each alternator must charge 3 battery dedtinations: 1/ its own starter battery, 2/ windlass battery, 3/ service battery. This is the reason why the argodiode, which I cannot supress.
This comes back to my first question: on which connection of the argodiode (×2) to connect the Orion ?
Output 2 of the Argodiodes is connected to the house battery currently. So the minimum that you need to do is add an Orion Smart into that line, so both output 2 will together feed the input of the Orion.
Output 1 will remain on each starter battery while output 3 goes to the windlass. No change there.
You could also use two Orions, connecting the port engine Argodiode output 2 only to the port side Orion input, and the same on starboard.
Whether to use an Orion Smart or an XS depends on how much you want to charge, and how flexible you want to be. The Orion Smart 30A can not be further limited in input current through the app, so you could not set it to 20A limit for example. The XS however can use custom current limits, so you could set it to 30A or 35A for example
I understand that this mandatory to connect the orion to the starter battery in // to the alternator in order to avoid any pick tension/current from the alternator to the orion.
Connecting the orions to outputs #2 may not meet this condition. What to you think?
In this example it is not an issue, since the alternator is always connected to the starter battery through output 1. What you need to avoid is connecting an alternator only to an Orion input, without any battery for the alternator to charge
