CVCC Charging control limitations

Q&A and troubleshooting
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1

I have recently finished an installation utilizing a Balmar XT250, Lynx BMS, Orion XS 50, and Wakespeed regulator.

With the battery bank 40% depleted, when I run the engine to charge the batteries, I am only seeing about 125 Amp output. The Alternator temperature is between 125 F and 135 F.

In my configuration, the alternator is discharging directly to the house bank, and the DC/DC chargers are being used to charge the engine and bow thruster batteries. Because the control algorithm assumes that they are servicing the house bank, if connected to the VE.Direct circuit, I have them disconnected from that.

In addition to the lower than expected output, it is also erratic. Sometimes jumping from 125 amps to 20 amps: and sometimes shutting down completely. These variations in output happens within seconds, and the change can be substantial.

I have set up the configuration for the Wakespeed, and downloaded it to the controller. It is in the slave mode, so I don’t think that it is controlling the field wire. I have attached a Fluke meter to the field wire, and it fluctuates in sync with eh amperage output.

I did notice that in the CVCC parameters, the target voltage is set at 14V. While the system is running, I can observe the target vs actual voltage output from the alternator.

WHY CAN’T I GET A HIGHER AMPERAGE OUTPUT FROM MY ALTERNATOR?

2
  1. Venus OS 3.60 added the feature to have the Orion XS charging secondary batteries from the house battery and be connected to the GX.
  2. Venus OS V3.67 fixed a bug in the WS500 that was rare but could cause loss of data. Is the alternator tile staying on when viewing the overview screen on the GX device.
  3. This may be a WS500 problem such as loose sense wires, high resistance in the main wiring, dodgy isolation switch / thermal breaker, field current wires etc. You should disconnect the WS500 from the GX device and run it standalone to see if it is charging OK or not in this configuration. If the WS500 is new, it is best to commission it standalone first and only once working well update to BMS controlled settings.
  4. Do you have any features linked to rpm, whitespace, pull back factor etc. and if so, is the rpm being reliably reported.
  5. Only the recent WS500 firmware supports DVCC, V2.50 onwards I believe.
  6. There is a pretty good WS500 Facebook group, try that.