I have a new campervan with all new Victron equipment fitted, but I seem to be having problems with charging the lithium battery. The battery charges fine with the Victron controller directly from the engine. However when I look at the app for the solar charging controller [ Smart Solar MPPT 76/10] it shows voltage and only one watt and never seems to be able to charge the battery. Also The Victron [blue smart IP22 charger 12/16 230 V] UK mains charger also is not charging the battery. It sees the battery and shows voltage but no amps going in and when the battery has been charged with the engine slightly the Victron 230 V charger thinks it is fully charged and shows it in a float situation. The correct lights are showing on the units and there is no fault information showing. However the battery is not charged as I’ve tested it separately on a volt meter. All this equipment was working when I picked the van up from the dealer, but now it seems to have developed these faults. I can’t easily take it back to the dealer as they are based in another country. Please could anybody offer me some advice? Thank you, Mike
Welcome to the forum.
Checking the battery state of charge with a voltmeter is unreliable at best. Is that how you are determining the battery is not charging? Do you have a SmartShunt or BMV in the system? Get one installed and configured correctly and that will eliminate a lot of guesswork.
My hunch is your batteries are closer to full than you think. Is the tech who installed the system available to you? They would have answers to a lot of the questions this forum will ask you. If you can post your charge settings for each charger and give us some more info on the system, specifically more information on the battery that will be a good start. Happy to help but need more info.
Thank you so much for your help. Please ask me for as much information as you like. So it looks like I do not have a smart shunt or BMV in the system, however I did put a bit of charge in from the engine just a couple of minutes worth and I watched the lights in the van go out as the battery died. The Solar and the mains charger do not seem to be able to put any charge in at all, only the engine charging. I have included some screenshots of my Victron app. I’ve double
checked the settings and they are all set for lithium. See what you think of the screenshots. Thank you so much for your help so far cheers Mike.
Check the connections between the chargers and the battery, including fuses, its looks like both dont have a connection anymore.
The mains charger was in absorption stage at 14.10V output while one MPPT showed 13.49V battery voltage. With neither of them showing any current. This means that they are for one disconnected from eachother (otherwise they would both show the same battery voltage) as well as disconnected from the battery (otherwise at least one would show a charging current).
Its also possible that the BMS switched off. What kind of batteries do you use?
@chrigu do you think its possible the battery is full? If the BlueSmart is networked with the Smartsolar wouldn’t the SmartSolar be using the Bluesmart voltage even if it is showing a low battery voltage due to potential voltage drop? 14.10V and no amps is what we would observe at the end of the charge cycle and that could put the SmartSolar into float depending on its settings. I would be interested what the voltage at the battery terminals is at the point of this screen shot.
thank you for the info. I tested it by letting the battery run completely flat. I know it was flat because nothing would turn on and I was still getting the same readings from the Victron apps. As soon as I started the van engine the engine charger puts in charge. Cheers Mike.
To be honest im the wrong person to ask about VE.smart details. I think without a voltage master in the network (shunt or batterySense) the function is pretty much useless, so ive never played around with it much.
But i would expect the SmartSolar, if its not the randomly chosen master, to be using the masters voltage. But also display that, even in instant readout. As if its own voltage measurment doesnt even exists.
With the VE.smart network there is no control over what device uses what data. I am not sure if the SmartSolar would use the BlueSmart data if they were networked or not. @Redlizard can check by clicking the gear icon in the chosen device, scrolling down to VE smart network, clicking on it and seeing what data is being shared if they are indeed networked. And IF the SmartSolar is using another devices voltage it will not show on the screen. It will show the actual voltage the device is reading at its terminals.
Does this give you some things to look into Redlizard?