I feel like I have a simple setup, yet it’s not working. Please help. I have a boat with 2 outboard motors. 2 cranking batteries and 1 house battery. I changed the house battery to lithium and installed the Smart Tr 12/12 30A charger. Boat has 2 battery switches. One for house and one for engines.
When I turn the house battery I get Nothing! I can only get power to the house side when I turn the engine batteries on and turn the house battery switch to “combined”. Doing this defeats the purpose of this setup. I don’t want to draw power from my cranking batteries when I’m out on the boat anchored listening to the radio
The power that went to the house battery was just rerouted to the input of the Victron. Same as negative. Then I just ran new cables from the outputs to the new lithium house.
It kind of sounds like a wiring set up issue, or the lithium bms has shut down output.
If possible scratch out a wiring diagram of your whole set up to help us work with you to diagnose a possible cause. Or picture of the set up. Fresh set of eyes may help.
Not sure if this will help. It seems as though when I turn the house switch on. Power should be able to pass through the victron to power the house components. But it doesn’t. It only sees power when I combine them and it pulls power from the input, which would be drawing from the cranking batteries
Should the input on the victron come from the house battery? Then what would happen when it’s trying to charge. Seems backwards
Think of the Victron as a one way switch.
It will charge the battery but won’t let charge from the battery pass the other way.
If this is what you are trying to do then it needs a rethink.
Possibly is the best answer I can give.
It all depends on the alternator voltages/current capacity and how much current the LifePo4 battery will sink. It’s possible to kill alternators as the LifePo4 will take whatever it can.
It’s possible to do using the Victron to keep alternators safe and wire the lights radio direct from the LifePo4 battery.
As I said you need to think about it I cant really advise from hundreds of miles away.
Ok. Not sure if this will work. But what if I created a jumper wire to go from the lithium back to the house switch and bypass the Victron when the engines are off? Like in this sketch. Or will this jumper just cause the same issue I’m trying to avoid?
Just wire the cranking batteries to their isolator
The house battery to its isolator.
Then the Victron directly between the cranking batteries and the house battery without an isolator.
