Having an issue getting my Orion TR Smart 12/18 to play nicely with the smart alternator in my 2019 Highlander.
I have disabled the “Engine Shutdown Detection” setting in the Orion and wired the ‘H’ side of the remote control to a signal wire from the Highlander. I can see that the Orion turns on when the signal wire goes high and it starts reporting the voltage from the Highlander battery/alternator. Initially, it sees about 13.7V and starts trying to charge the trailer battery. But after a few seconds, the voltage from the highlander drops down to about 10V and the Orion turns off. Then the voltage rises again to 13.7V (approximately) and the Orion turn on again. This cycle just continues indefinitely. For some reason, the Highlander’s smart alternator keeps cycling down even when there is a load from the Orion.
Any ideas how to force the alternator to stay spun up?
This rather sounds like massive voltage drop on the input side. Smart alternators do drop their output voltage yes, but a regular 12V lead acid battery does not drop below 12V just because some 18A are drawn by an Orion. And just because the alternator reduces its output voltage does not mean that the starter battery magically does as well, at least not by that amount.
Where is the Orion mounted, in the trailer close to the battery that needs charging? How long are the input cables, what cable gauge was used? Is the ORion an isolated or non-isolated model?
Its next to the battery in the trailer and is an isolated model.
And yes, the TV voltage drop is puzzling, assuming that the Orion is reporting it correctly. The +12V is coming via the 7-pin connector, but the Orion does report 13.7V for a time before dropping to 10V, so hard to attribute this to a faulty 7-pin connector.
Might have to put a voltmeter on the TV battery itself to see if it is reporting the same numbers as the Orion.
The cable gauge and the 7-pin connector itself wont be able to carry those 18A, thats why the voltage drops that low. You may need to install sepearate cables with an anderson plug for example to feed the Orion
@chrigu is right. The 7 pin is almost never adequate for an Orion. I would suggest starting from scratch at the starting battery with 6 AWG cable and proper fusing.
You need to understand the electric basics of resistance. If the Orion is drawing minimum current through a high resistance connection there is no voltage loss so it measures 13.7V, when it tries to draw current the resistance causes voltage drop so it goes to 10V. Consider a hosepipe with a twist in it, if you put your finger over the end you still feel full water pressure as there is little flow. If you remove your finger then you get a little flow but no pressure because the pressure drops over the twist. Voltage = pressure, current = flow.
I am familiar with basic electronics. But to get a voltage drop of nearly 4V even if it were pulling a full 18A (not sure it is pulling that much as the trailer battery was fully charged during my testing) that is something like 0.25 ohms, which is way more than can be explained by a narrow gauge wire somewhere in the 7 way plug (everything else is 10AWG but for some reason the 7 way plugs never document the wires used internally so its difficult to know what is in there). I’m currently checking to see if there is some corrosion somewhere in the connectors.
First, the Orion is trying to deliver 18A, which means it’s probably trying to pull between 20-22A or so from the start battery, through your thin wiring;
Second, the 7-pin isn’t your source of power; the start battery is your source of power. How far from the start battery is the 7-pin connector, and how far from the 7-pin connector is the “input” side of the Orion? Take those measurements, add them together and then multiply them by 2, and that’s the round-trip circuit length on the input side of the Orion. Punch that calculation into a voltage drop calculator like the one in the Victron Toolkit app, and -as others have said- you’ll certainly find that you’ll need to run independent larger-gauge wires directly from your start battery back to the Orion.
Yup - problem appears to have been corrosion in the 7-way socket/plug. Replaced the socket with a new unit (even the bolts holding the socket had corroded so far that I couldn’t get the nut off even with WD40 - had to use an angle grinder to cut them off) and cleaned out the trailer plug using a brass brush and contact cleaner and I no longer get that voltage drop with the Orion engages.
Still not overly happy with where I had to anchor the ground wire. The 4-way plug has a ground connection back somewhere inside the car (still cannot find the other end of the cable). The 7-way uses the 4-way ground plus its own ground wire which I screwed into a piece of sheet metal near the socket. Finally found a factory-installed ground lug near the back of the Highlander, but it is up inside the car body near the left rear tire, so I would have to drill another hole through the body to bring that down the socket. Would prefer to not drill another hole if I can avoid it.