I’m an experienced electrical engineer, and I have used a number of Victron products over the years, but never their batteries or BMSs.
I have a system with very particular packaging and bus voltage requirements. 6x LFP12,8/200 batteries in series would be an ideal combination, but that does not seem to be a supported configuration for any Victron BMS product.
Does anyone have any feedback on how something like a smallBMS NG would react if I were to wire it to a set of batteries in this configuration?
I could, in theory, use one BMS per pair of series batteries (for a total of 3 BMS modules, each seeing a “24V” battery), but I imagine the middle and upper BMS units would be very unhappy without a consistent ground reference.
Any ideas, advice, or comments would be greatly appreciated!
As anything over 48vNom is entirely unsupported in Victron products, and thus runs the real risk -if not indeed guarantee- of being an incredibly expensive mistake, can I ask why you wouldn’t just use a battery pack that’s already at your desired voltage, or batteries in series from a manufacturer that supports exceeding 48vNom?
“Why not just” is the perennial engineering question! The existing pack is unsuitable for reasons I don’t want to get into, which is why I’m seeking a replacement. I’ve always been very happy with the quality, reliability, and availability of Victron products. It also happens that the LFP12,8/200 hits a real sweet spot of physical dimensions, storage capacity, and discharge current.
I’m trying to understand where the true limits of the system are. “Unsupported” is not the same as “it will break if you do this.”
To your point, this could potentially be a very expensive science project, which is why I’m here looking for feedback from someone who may have been down this road already.
I guess my point is just that when a product is expressly stated as having a maximum 48vNom configuration, typically one would then look elsewhere if trying to work with something that exceeds this express statement.
I can personally attest that Victron’s published maximum system voltage statements should be taken very seriously, but I can’t say I’ve known anyone who tried to run the batteries in a higher-voltage configuration than expressly stated as the maximum. All I can say is, I would personally strongly advise against pursuing this course of action, and instead look to one of the manufacturers that expressly state that your design voltage is within their limits.