Off-grid car battery trickle charger - Orion XS

[kan-garoo (David)]

Hello,

I often park my car without access to an electrical outlet. I am trying to use an Orion XS as a battery maintainer so the car can sit as long as possible without the battery dying. The car has a fairly high parasitic draw. I have a solar panel for the summer, but it is not enough in the winter.

I have a LiFePO4 (100Ah) as the source battery. I want to charge the car battery through the Orion XS. The settings are attached in the image. Currently, I am testing at home on a GS Yuasa 65Ah PB classic - 360LN2-MF battery. After a while, the voltage rises up to 15.41 Volts and I don’t know why :-/. What am I doing wrong?

Is it possible to set the Orion so that it wakes up once a week and tops up the car battery? Or would it be better to compensate for the parasitic draw in the battery and run the Orion XS as a power supply?

How it is wired: LiFePO4 + is connected to Orion IN through a 16A breaker, SmartShunt 500A is connected to Orion GND, LiFePO4 - is connected to SmartShunt Battery minus. SmartShunt has one cable going to a Victron busbar, and one cable to Orion GND. From the Orion, a + cable goes to the Victron busbar through a fuse. This is where the SmartShunt Aux is. Vbat+ from the SmartShunt goes to the LiFePO4.

I would like to charge the LiFePO4 battery at home and then leave it in the car. Thank you in advance for any ideas.

Best regards, David

[chrigu]

@kan-garoo

After a while, the voltage rises up to 15.41 Volts and I don’t know why :-/. What am I doing wrong?

Have you joined the shunt and orion into a common VE.smart network? If so then undo that. Joining them into the same VE.smart means the shunt takes over the voltage measurment of the orions output, but the output in your case is connected to a different battery than the shunt is measuring.

@kan-garoo

Is it possible to set the Orion so that it wakes up once a week and tops up the car battery?

Use the repeat absorption option

[kan-garoo (David)]

Dear Chrigu,

Thank you very much for the answer. It helped me a lot. There was indeed a problem with the VE.smart network connection. I guess I misunderstood the function!