Hi, I’m new to the forums and the Victron world, but I’ve spent a lot of time reading up on it recently as I’m doing a camper van conversion and using Victron components. I’ve made a wiring diagram and was just hoping some of you would be able to take a look at it for me and let me know what you think or if I’m missing anything?
Further context:
It’ll be going in a Ford Transit 350 HR. The 3 100W solar panels will be mounted on the roof, but I’d like to add a port to connect an external panel, as shown in my diagram.
I will likely program each of the Orion XS to tone them back slightly (40-45A each) for less stress on the stock 250A alternator.
The DC fuse blocks I have shown going through 100A fuses in the Lynx Distributor, I can always adjust these lower once I see how I’ll divide up DC loads through each of the blocks. I haven’t added my runs to the 120V distribution panel yet either (wall outlets, water heater, etc).
I have a majority of the components already but I’m hoping to hear some feedback before finalizing ordering the rest. It’s my first design for a van so I’d appreciate hearing if I’m forgetting anything!
Make sure those DC circuit breakers are decent quality, theres some out there that have high contact resistance when closed.
The fixed PV i would wire in series. Depending on the actual panel data a 100V MPPT might or might not be enough, but you can leave out all the inline fuses and triple paralleling adapters. For 300W PV a 50A MPPT is overkill, a 20A would be overpaneled a bit, but since the panels are mounted flat (on the roof i guess) i doubt they ever reach their full power anyway.
The portable PV is ok, the MPPT is overpaneld a bit, so its likely that it will hit its 15A output, so the 15A fuse might not like that for long. If it blows, use a 20A.
Ill reconsider the DC circuitbreakers in the PV cabling. If you want them as PV disconnects then thats ok, but they wont ever trip on overload or shortcircuit. Panels usually deliver an Isc of 6-8A, the CBs wont care about that. I use inline fuses, no disconnects, on PV that stays within low voltage limits (max. 50VAC/120VDC) but your local code could say that you need disconnects.
I would need to connect the multiplus case ground directly to the vehicle body. Since its a safety connection it cant pass trough the negative busbar, which is a functional connection. But again, check your local code.
Keep an eye on how the trickle charger and the Orions work together. You dont want the Orions engine running detection to kick in because of the trickle charge. Trickle charge depends on MPs battery voltage, not on ACin.
Do not forget that as you have lithium batteries, the trickle charger will always be delivering a trickle charge, not just when the domestic batteries are on charge.
Will do on the circuit breakers, all of the ones I’ve gotten so far have been from Blue Sea Systems which seem to be well respected.
I should have mentioned something about the MPPT controller in the original post but forgot, I know it’s overkill for this setup, I got the 100 quite a while back for a good price when I was looking at taking a different approach to the solar.
I’ve went back and forth on parallel vs series for the roof panels. I live in the north, so there’s a lot of cloudy days and series sounds better for that. My big concern though was that I’m generally not in super open areas, and tend to be where there’s quite a bit of tree coverage. So my big concern with series is if one of my panels is covered/partially covered I’d reduce/lose the ability to charge from the other two. I think quite often I’ll be in situations where I’ll have partial shade so that’s why I ended up thinking parallel would be better, but I’m still torn on this so I’ll have to do some more research and pondering… If I stay parallel perhaps I should swap the 30A breaker with a PV rated one, I didn’t realize there was a difference at the time.
There’s unfortunately no data connection on the batteries to connect their BMS to the Cerbo.
Appreciate the info! I think it would be rare for me to actually need to use the trickle charge functionality. I liked the idea of it though just in case of an emergency if my starter battery were to get too low for some reason. I go to quite remote places so having some ability to recharge the starter batteries from the house batteries would be nice to have, and this seemed like the simplest solution to that. My understanding is you can turn it on/off digitally, but perhaps it would be worth adding a physical inline switch as well just to help prevent forgetting it’s on.
