Hi there!! I’m hoping and praying someone might be able to help me.
I drove down to the alps for a few days and my battery was working and charging as I was driving. (With solar too) The since being here on a campsite with shore power, I haven’t been able to charge. The battery is warm, the fuse for the shore power is not faulty, I am getting a solid orange light on the charge on the multiples box, suggesting it should be charging, however the % isn’t going up on the app or on the reader.
Thank you in advance and any ideas or thoughts would be appreciated!
I brought the whole kit from Jackson leisure and it’s called the “victron kit 2” I have the multiplus 12 | 1600 | 70. I have 370 watt solar with mppt controller and a lithium LiFePO4 battery. I did then also get an Orion dc/ dc. I also have a smart shunt.
The system has been working for the last few months but this is the first time it’s been out on an adventure. It was charging up to 100% as I was driving and only now I’m not driving it and I’m plugged in, it’s not charging at all. The battery was definitely too cold so after warming it all day, it’s still not kicked into life.
And I have programmed the multiplus to the LiFePO4 settings that I googled a while back.
Do you have any monitoring on the system? Is the shunt wired correctly? The battery negative should only connect to the shunts battery side, everything elses negative needs to connect to the shunt load side. If the multiplus is connected directly to the battery then the shunt can not measure that charging current
Like a said, there are a lot of possibilities here. One guess would be charging voltages conflicting. One charger’s voltage is causing others to disconnect. Ideally all the chargers should be set to the same voltages and synchronized. If your Orion is the XS model it can be synced with the MPPT using the VE Network(the BMV can be added to this network as well). This will reduce them potentially forcing each other off. At the very least they will work more efficiently
If its your Multiplus that wont charge as you are describing there are a couple things that come to mind. Bare with me for a short tutorial.
Your multiplus is set to start charging at a particular voltage for the batteries. If it thinks that voltage is already reached it may not come on. If you have just shut off the vehicle and the Orion has been charging, especially if it was in or close to absorption there will be a high voltage showing on the batteries. Immediately plugging into shore power before this high voltage dissipates could cause the multiplus to see the batteries as “full”. Before you plug into shore power observe the battery voltage. If it is higher than your charging voltage set in the Multiplus then turn on some lights and a fan to bring down the surface charge. Then plug in the Multiplus.
These are just a few ideas based on the limited info we have to work with. I’m sure there are others out there with some good ideas too.
I would recommend talking with Jackson Leisure as they supplied the kit.
To go deeper here I will need your specific charge settings for all the chargers.
Thank you for the response. I think they are all set correctly and the only thing I can think of it being is the BMS issue and it’s preventing it from continuing to charge. I left it on in charge mode overnight, woke up, turned it off and then back on a while after and it charged up a few % and then stopped again. The voltage sky rockets and then starts going down again and will begin to drain once more