I recently acquired two Victron 160Ah lithium batteries for free, and I’d love to add their capacity to my system. They are only a few years old and in really good shape. I currently have 400Ah of Battle Born batteries, so integrating the Victrons would nearly double my capacity. However, there are some challenges: they differ in age, capacity, and manufacturer from my Battle Borns, and I don’t have space to simply parallel them into my current setup. They’d need to be installed in a separate cabinet on the other side of my van.
To work around this, my plan is to keep the two battery systems completely separate. I’ll divert my solar input to charge the Victron batteries and use them as a “reservoir.” Then, I’ll use an Orion-Tr Smart 50A DC-DC charger to transfer power from the Victrons to my Battle Born battery bank as it depletes.
Here is the wiring diagram I came up with for this plan, in it the positive and negative leads from the Orion XS that currently go nowhere would connect to my Lynx distributor in my main system.
Hopefully the the wiring diagram helps illustrate this setup.
I have quite a bit of experience with Victron products, but I’ve never used their batteries. The external BMS and battery protect features are new to me, and I was hoping someone could take a look at my wiring setup to confirm if it’s aligned with Victron’s intended configuration. I’ve spent the last few hours reading the manuals, so I believe I’m on the right track, but I’d appreciate some validation or adjustments.
Additionally, I’d love to get some feedback on the overall concept. I’ve never seen a setup like this, so I’m unsure if it’s brilliant or stupid. I do know it’s a bit complex, but these are such high-quality batteries that being able to nearly double my capacity for free is a huge opportunity.
Thanks in advance for taking the time to even just read this.