nicknorman

That’s not a suitable charger for lithium batteries.

Aha! They’ve obviously been reading this thread. Website is now updated to the correct county and the correct canal.

Well, day 1 at Aston, mightily impressed. Marina staff super friendly and efficient, everything spotless and organised, lovely lighting at night, and we splashed out on a meal in the restaurant which was excellent with exemplary service. Can’t fault it so far. And all for £500 less than FMM (although we will probably spend the £500 in the restaurant and bar!).

What about the Ribble Link though?

Well we've arrived at Aston Marina, made very welcome, great berth near the marina office and not too near the wedding venue, enjoyed a drink on the terrace and splashing out on a meal in the restaurant tonight. Chalk and cheese from FMM 2.0. No before you start I don't mean we are having chalk and cheese for dinner.

No a different Kat, the Marina Manager is Kathryn. No reply from Ian to my polite and courteous email after 36 hrs so probably not going to get one. I do find it very odd that he seems not in the slightest bit interested in why people are leaving in droves. Refusal to engage at all with customers or even listen to any feedback is not a good look for any company. They are either very stupid or have a cunning plan that doesn’t involve moorers. I suppose what particularly irks me is that Rothen has made sufficient profit from CRT to build a new marina, then extend it significantly, then buy another long established marina seemingly as a plaything and not concerned about its financial viability. And no doubt pay themselves handsome dividends and salaries as well. That money, which in part is our money and also taxpayers money, should be going to maintaining the system, not falling into private hands. I suppose it’s not Rothen’s fault particularly (although they clearly don’t feel too bad about profiting from canal maintenance funds) but mostly lies with the CRT policy of outsourcing everything.

According the BMV. Or just discharge until the voltage gets to about 11.5 or so. Or even until a low voltage disconnect. Just put it on charge straight afterwards. Just cell voltage of the lowest cell. Although it might also have an overall low voltage cut off too. Certainly nothing to do with SoC.

I suggest discharging it right down to 10% or so. Don’t forget that taking Li to 10% is in not damaging although it’s best to start charging again fairly soon. Taking it up to 100% is worse!

How many reasonably deep cycles has it done now? Mine got much better after 3 or 4 reasonably deep cycles. It is pretty good now. Its a year or so old now, so I doubt it would be a more recent firmware version than yours.

I don’t believe Peukert has any relevance to the SoC of a Li battery. But then again, neither did it for an LA battery. It was a myth, legend and mantra that I didn’t believe in. You did leave the “get a room” post which is now a bit confusing!

The Victron BMS seems a good design in many ways, particularly impressive is the ability to limit current at 100A without dissipating too much heat (presumably). It would of course work best in an all-Victron system. But for me there would be a couple of issues relating to alternators, firstly that max current is 100A whereas I can easily run our ubiquitous Iskra 175 alternator at 125A without overheating, and that could probably be 140A or more with better cooling. Secondly, these big alternators even on a fairly large engine like our Beta43, sap a lot of torque from the engine if field current is max at low revs, making it struggle to accelerate from idle and putting a lot of stress on the belt, pulleys and crank. 100A at idle is too much. Really one needs an alternator controller that reduces field current at low rpm (Wakespeed etc). And with a proper alternator controller, the need for the Victron external BMS more or less disappears.

Mid summer, quite a few boats are out cruising, including ours. The same photo taken now would look very different. You could pop over with your drone… Interestingly there’s just been a post on the FMM moorers Facebook page from the new Jules Fuels fuel boat lady. Apparently they have been given permission to sell within the marina, so I would presume FMM is going to stop providing services (fuel, coal, gas) altogether even to the moorers.

Yes people in marinas do take their boats out sometimes! But at the marina in question I’d say occupancy was getting close to 50%. I am aware of 9 boats that have left recently, all previously long-termers like us. Whereas at the new marina there was a waiting list. Here’s a pic of a different part of the marina and bossy note from kat on the bollard!

That’s good. Kat will be spitting feathers if she sees that on her CCTV screens! Yes Ben is a lovely chap, I did mention that upthread. Not sure he will last long though. Last night I emailed Ian Rothen asking if he would be interested in feedback as to why we and so many others have left. It will be interesting to see if I get a reply.

I sympathise muchly. A horrible job and the chances of your clothes escaping without holes seems slight. I’d continue with the bicarbonate of soda treatment for as long as possible, maybe do a rinse and repeat a few times. You will get it sorted eventually!

That was the other Tony. I always suspected there was a fault with the other alternator (blown diode etc).

Personally I’d call it a buffer battery. Not that it matters what you call it!

B2B current flows one way, but of course a box of tricks might well have 2 B2Bs in reverse parallel. And of course faster than light travel of information is already available, just awaiting a firmware update. I think what is relevant about that is that the B2B continues to charge the engine battery even after the van engine is stopped. So if the engine battery is running at a deficit for a few hours, this will be recouped overnight or whatever, by being charged from the domestic Li battery. It would be interesting to know if the van could tolerate very long drives without lengthy periods of the engine being stopped (overnight etc).

So as I said, it is unidirectional. No doubt it could in the future be made to be bidirectional. Along with faster than light travel, coming soon…

If it is MOSFET switch then it’s the same as a relay. A direct bidirectional connection. A B2B is not a direct connection even though the circuitry might contain MOSFETs amongst other things. Input and output voltage of a B2B are likely to be quite different, unlike a relay or VSR. And current can’t flow bidirectionally.

I would say it’s more like a VSR. Probably with MOSFET switching rather than a mechanical relay.

I think it was probably a combination of bungs left in AND voltage sense wire on the wrong terminal. Like most accidents, more than one contributory cause. Eliminating just one of the two causes would have prevented the accident.

But in my experience Li cells, once properly balanced, never go out of balance unless they are faulty. The algorithm mention by the OP implies 2hr absorption every time SoC goes below 70%, which could be every day.

Maybe it was a typo?

A proper system! I would just say that 2hrs absorption seems excessive even bearing in mind the caveats you mention. Once the voltage has hit 14.0v (which is presumably when the absorption timer starts), I would have expected the current to have fallen below 5% in 15 to 30 mins, and holding the voltage up at 14v after that doesn’t really achieve anything, and does slightly stress the batteries. Might be worth observing the behaviour / charge current during the absorption phase after you have discharged below 70%.