Victron batteries not charging from alternator. Installer not much help. Wakespeed 500 charge controller, Balmar XT 170 alternator, charging 2-200 ah Victron lifepo house batteries. Smart BMS.
Solar charging working. Was working fine all summer. Suddenly stopped.
more information about your system, such as a schematic would possibly help?
Here’s my system; 2-200 ah Victron lifepo house batteries, fed from Lynx distributor, connected to Lynx BMS, connected to load side Lynx distributor with 4-IOs, PV charge source, Balmar XT-170 engine alternator, house dc load panel, Victron dc/dc chargers for engine start battery. Alternator is controlled by Wakespeed 500 slaved to the Victron BMS.
On returning home voyage it was apparent that the lifepo batteries were not charging. Trying to chase the problem down. WS 500 was not putting out much field charge.
After fiddling around with Wakespeed support the entire system shut down, no PV charging, entire house panel dark. The smart BMS turned off the entire system.
After an extended phone session with the installer, who was mystified by the persist ent error code he concluded the Balmar XT -170 is dead. The whole Victron system had to be isolated from the BMS, then on the load side we added back each load one and charge source one by one until the #25 error code came back. When the alternator was connected up to the Lynx distributor the BMS went into fault mode, error #25. It’s a pretty dumb system for something that is hyped as “smart”, IMO. When a professional installer is stumped by an error code a newbie operator like me is SOOL. The system freaks me out frankly. I plan to travel to remote locations next year and having an electric system that shuts down everything because of a problem with one component seems too fragile to be relied upon.
So after an hour with the installer electrician it appears the new Balmar XT-170 has been fried. As soon as it is reconnected to the Lynx distributor the BMS goes into #25 error. I thought the Wakespeed 500 was supposed to protect the alternator diodes? I’m having to send the alternator back to Balmar before the will consider warranty in this device. I am assuming the diodes are toast, I don’t see what else it could be, only 155 hours on this.
Any help on how to integrate the Victron Lynx BMS with the Wakespeed 500 would be appreciated. I can’t find anything on Victron site that will help.
Did you try to Google with “wakespeed Victron”?
Wakespeed-and-Victron-Cerbo-GX-Setup-Guide-11.18.2022-V4-1.pdf (9,1 MB)