Hi I have just had a Lithium battery and a Orion xs fitted to my motorhome, not by me as I wouldn’t know where to start. Despite changing settings on the Orion after watching You Tube it only gives a charge of 9 amps 130 watts.Supposed to give 50. I would be grateful if anybody knew what I needed to do as Im sure there’s nothing wrong with the Orion xs. Cheers
First off, read the section in the manual about the difficulties Euro 6 engines present. Are you using engine shutdown detection or is it wired to ignition.
Drop a screenshot of your status page when it is in operation and your battery settings and engine shutdown settings. Then when we have info we can help.
It is most likely due to low alternator voltage.
Thanks won’t be at the van until Friday then will do so. Cheers.
Hi these are my settings for my Orion XS that’s just not giving the charge its supposed to do. Sorry about the delay but have been away. Tank you.
Those are your settings for the SmartShunt or BMV battery monitor.
Needs the Orion XS settings and status page as noted above for any trouble shooting plus if you ae using engine shutdown detection or a wired ignition signal.
All of those look OK. Now to provide any targetted advice post a screenshot of the status page when the device is running with the low charge rate of around 9 Amps.
The best guess is with a Euro 6 vehicle the alternator voltage is very low around 13.1V so the Orion is reducing output. This is all explained in the manual. Section 4.2 for shutdown and Section 4.3 for Euro 6 vehicles.
This is the status page we need to see.
OK, so the input voltage is not the issue as I expected, it is the output voltage that is the issue. The output voltage at the output of the Orion is 14.2V so it is at the required voltage and all it can pass through at that voltage is 10.9A.
There are 3 causes of this.
- The battery is pretty full which will restrict the amps so check your battery SOC and voltage on the battery app. If the SOC is >90% and the battery voltage is also showing 14.2V and 10A then it is full. You give no details about the size of battery, hopefully it is larger than 100Ah.
- The battery app has not been used to turn charging on, so the Orion is only providing power to the domestic circuits.
- The one we see most commonly is you have a poor wiring connection between the Orion XS and the lithium battery. If the lithium battery app (or a multimeter on the terminals) is showing say 13.5V and the Orion says 14.2V then you have a lot of voltage drop between the two. The wiring is too thin, too long, has a loose bolt, poor crimp, insulation trapped in a terminal block or poor isolator or breaker or fuse. The poor connection can be in the positive or negative cabling. Use a multimeter to check the voltage along the wire to find the poor connection. Does your install use these types of no name breaker, they are very poor and often have high resistance.
Thank you I will have a check when I next use the van next. Its a 200 ah battery by the way, forgot to mention. Thanks again.