Some beautiful installs here. Very much enjoy oggling some of these wiring projects.
This is the diagram I created to help document the Victron / Epoch Battery upgrade to our 47 foot sailboat, Galapagos. Currently lying in Nuevo Vallarta, Mexico. Future improvements include Ruuvi tags for environmental monitoring and a Zeus or Wakespeed alternator regulator to replace the Balmar MC614.
Hello Micheal, good to see the setup.
Its always nice to see liveaboard facitites for us yachties. I have a Jeanneau 42DS with a Balmar 614 external regulator with a Balmar series 6 alternator. I note you are replacing the Balmar 614 with the Wakespeed regulator but wonder what advantage that will give you? I am happy with the Balmar 614 and have a temperature sensor on the body of the alternator to reduce excitation current if the alternator gets too hot. It all works well and although I am aware of the Wakespeed product have not yet been inspired enough to replace the Balmar.
Regards
Trevor
I have a WS500 ready to install and have used Balmar in the past. Advantages I see are the battery current measurement so better control of the end of absorption, alternator rpm measurement with the ability to reduce alternator power at low rpm to stop a large 175A alternator from loading the engine too much and the integration with Victron DVCC so it acts as another controlled charge source.
@pwfarnell they sound like very valid reason to me. Nice to have the alternator power source so well integrated and controllable. Thanks for the advice and good luck with the installation.
@pwfarnell explains the advantage quite well. I will add that having the Alternator charge profile controlled by the battery via DVCC not only protects the engine, but the alternator and the LiFePo batteries. While I have a Balmar APM12 protection unit on the alternator I would prefer to think of that as a last resort in case the Epoch batteries should enter into an overcharge protection fault or any other fault that disconnects the battery from its charge source. With the Wakespeed or Zeus controllers, the Epoch battery can directly shut down the field voltage to the alternator once they have reached 100% SOC (or close to it). At least that is how I visualize using the additional capability. As a practical matter I tend to perseverate on the the battery and charging systems and so monitor their health pretty regularly when underway.
The CAN communications of the epoch will not work as you think it will with either the Zeus or the Wakespeed when you make the change from the depicted graphic. It will communicate with the gx device and give VRM data, but it doesn’t have a pre-signal prior to BMS “event,” nor does it use SOC to control charging.
The BMS does not manage charging like a Lynx BMS does with SOC logic for CVL change to effectively have absorption and float phases for DVCC capable chargers. You will end up with a single stage charging which will either keep your battery at bulk/absorption voltage (unhealthy) or at float voltage unless you manually intervene with a CVL change.
You can successfully use the Zeus or Wakespeed charging profiles with the epoch but it will be the regulator charging profile, not dvcc managed charging. Essentially, you will have “dumb” LFP batteries (nothing, per se, wrong with that) with some GX info on the device pages and nice VRM battery information.
They are well built batteries with some nice features (internal IEC gR high AIC fuse, terrific case, CANbus data reporting). The bespoke BMS works but has some interesting design choices (no active balancing, 14v overcharge fault logic, poor low current detection in the coulomb counter).
@jjduke, thanks for that. I will need to digest some of that but I will concur that the BMS on the Epoch leaves something to be desired. And I have read recently that dispensing with the DVCC for these batteries may be a better option.
When I left the boat in June, the latest upgrade to the app had not been released (the Epoch App was another disappointment) and so I have not seen what new capabilities it provided. It was also rumored that a firmware update to the BMS was imminent. As you say, the batteries have much to recommend them but in my experience, the customer support and the app to control them need work.
Follow Allen J (mv intrigue/FB) for best direct experience with the batts from an install and knowledge. The Zeus/Wakespeed info is from one of the Zeus team—the marketing of the CAN capabilities didn’t track with making it work for anything other than GX system display and VRM.
for a firmware update to resolve the problems for the installed base. I think many would settle for a good manual update with the lessons learned incorporated.
