We Just bought a Victron Smart MPPT 450 / 200 charge controller. We have four solar arrays total 10 Kw Hrs. We want to charge a fogstar 16 kwhr lithium battery. All charging will come from this solar, and not from the inverter, which is a Conversol 7.2Kw. The Fofstar battery and the Victron charge controller have CANbus sockets. We need the battery BMS to communcate with the charge controller. Is it essential to have a GX device to enable this ? I was hoping the two devices would be able to communicate via the supplied comms cable from Fogstar.
The smart MPPT has no interface for a BMS so yes, that is if the battery is compatible with the victron GX device.
You can adjust the settings on the MPPT according to the battery specs. Is there another reason you need communication?
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Hi, thanks for the quick response. We have set it up with user defined settings according to the battery spec, but I thought it would be best if the battery BMS had direct control of the charging.
Often the comms can create more problems than they solve.
Voltage based with shunt is best imo.
Having the BMS control the charging is always best. If left to the total voltage, then if the battery gets out of balance (which it will if charged from 80% to 100% at high current) then you are likely to get disconnections due to high cell voltage. Best to use a GX device.