Hello Karl-Heinz,
That’s something I’ve been missing until now. It would be particularly interesting for the Orion XS 1400. Is there anything we can read about it?
It has been known for some time that the XS hardware supports bidirectional charging; I believe it was even mentioned at one point in the marketing materials. However, the feature has not been implemented until now.
The fact that this is now supposed to be introduced as an emergency charging function can currently only be seen in the VictronConnect beta changelog. When this function will be released, what exactly it will look like and which devices it will support specifically will probably only be communicated with the corresponding firmware update.
Yes, this has already been mentioned several times here on the forum as well. It’s supposed to be coming soon—it’s just a matter of R&D’s workload.
I was already able to test the so-called “emergency charging” in the beta, and it is expected to be released in a few weeks.
This will be coming to all Orion XS units.
I hope that afterwards it will move in the direction of “standby charging” for the starter battery. I’ll discuss this again with the relevant developers soon.
If this is taken into account, it could open up a much more important possibility: two different battery types or voltages could be operated simultaneously. For example, lead-acid batteries might be used because of low temperatures. In solar off-grid systems, they provide plenty of surplus power when they enter the absorption phase. This surplus could be used to charge a LiFePO4 battery when the temperature allows it. If the lead-acid battery were discharged, the Orion could supply power from the LiFePO4 battery to the lead-acid battery and fully charge it on short days. This would not only expand the storage capacity. It would also be possible to bring a lightweight, charged LiFePO4 battery from home. That would be an important option for cabins that are visited occasionally during the winter. The data required for this is available in Venus.
The firmware update for this is now available, although, as for iOS the version of victron connect needed to turn the emergency charge function on isn’t available in the App Store yet.