I have an Orion XS1400 installed to charge my 24v 200AH LiPO4 battery via a manual on/off switch, works fine/great! I also have an Orion 12/24v 20a converter/charger that I was thinking to install as well to further up my alternator charging ability of my 200ah LiPO4 battery while driving.
Are there any watchouts to consider with this? I’m not sure if there’s any voltage settings that would need tweaked on the XS1400 to ensure it’s still operating as expected alongside the 12/24 20a unit.
Further context:
I’d tie this into my existing Lynx distributor. XS1400 is tied in already
I’d opt for a manual on/off switch as with the XS1400.
My alternator can handle the current of both units.
I posted in the FB group and only got a few responses to doing a little more diligence here. One person said they likely wouldn’t pair the “smart” XS1400 with the regular 12/24 Orion. Another said, “You can use as many chargers as you want as long as you don’t exceed the charge rate of the battery.” So, I’m curious anyone’s take here too.
I’m sure they can both be set up to charge the battery bank. It wouldn’t be any different than having a solar MPPT charging at the same time as an Orion. I am not sure if you could daisy chain them being different units though. Running the Orion straight to the Lynx independently will definitely be fine.
One thought is that you wont be able to bluetooth synchronize the charging with the older Orion. This should be fine but may lose you some efficiency that you would gain otherwise and could require some “fiddling” with the settings to get everything to charge correctly(i.e. one charger’s settings causing the other charger to shut off).
Also, rule of thumb is not to exceed 50% of your alternators rated output in DC to DC charging. For example a 200 amp alternator should only have 100 Amps of chargers running off it.
And as always, don’t under size cable and make sure to fuse properly.
AFAIK charge stage synchronisation over VE.smart is only a thing between MPPTs. Is this also now available for Orions? Do they actively synchronize their charge stages?
It could just be a “passive” synchronisation, since the VE.smart network uses one single battery voltage measurment for the whole group, so if every unit has the same charge settings they also switch stage all at (roughly) the same time.
You are correct, the Orions can’t be networked wirelessly using VE. Smart Network(this would be very cool) like SmartSolar MPPTs. What I meant was old Orion’s aren’t VE.Direct so cant be connected to a GX network. You wont have the possible advantages of using those features like seeing your chargers on VRM or on a GX touch screen, no DVCC, stuff like that. The Orion XS does have VE. Direct. Also below is another feature that the older Orions don’t have.
