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Charging mixed battery types from PV & alternator

Aphers

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Nov 17, 2020
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Hopefully this is a very easy one to answer.
If I have a lead-acid bank alongside my LFP, how do I set up the charging from both alternator and PV?
The MPPT controller I am planning on installing (Epever Tracer) can be configured for various battery types, but whilst it can handle two banks I don't think they can have different settings (might be wrong about this, still wading through the manuals etc). So I would probably have to just have the PV charging the LFP bank. I do already have a PWM controller- can I connect this to the same array of solar panels and use it to charge the lead-acids? Or just forget about that, and use a B2B charger from the LFPs.
I'm guessing that the alternator, maxing out at less than 14.4v, won't be likely to cause any harm to the LFP bank- but if the bank were disconnected, e.g. by the BMS, it could be very bad for the alternator itself. So probably best to only use alternator charging with the lead-acids in parallel, as a buffer/dump.

I'm sure this is a solved problem, but I'm struggling to find an obvious answer... still at the very early and confused stage of the learning process :D
 
I want to make sure I understand right. You have a flooded battery, maybe as your starter battery, and then a lithium battery for your house? If so, that is very common. The alternator can charge the lead acid, and a DC/DC like the Victron Orion can charge the lithium from the lead acid. You can also have the PV connected to the lithium. You cannot use 2 different charge controllers on the same solar panels. If you wanted to use solar to also charge the flooded, you'd need a separate panel and controller. There's a couple different drawings, maybe one of them is what you are thinking.

Orion.pngOrion with 2 batteries.png
 
Thanks for that. You mention charging the LFP from the FLA via a DC-DC charger. Is this fairly inefficient? If the FLA was just a small engine start battery then I can see why that would make a lot of sense.

I have a lot of decisions to make and would prefer to reuse existing equipment if possible, to keep the budget down. My existing 220+110Ah FLA banks are in decent condition and I was thinking of keeping that as my emergency engine start (110Ah) and backup domestic (220Ah) banks. Then adding a new LFP bank of 200Ah or more. The LFP bank should be enough for my needs most of the time but I expect to dip into the FLA fairly often so would want to be able to charge that from PV.

The main power source would be 800w of PV. Alternator charging would be a byproduct of those days when I have to run the engine- not planning on that being more than a few days each month. But the alternator is also my last resort backup power when the banks are getting low and the sun isn't shining, so I do need to be able to charge all the batteries from it in some way. I was thinking of having a DC-DC charger to use the LFP bank to charge the FLA,

Just to further complicate things, I've got a towed hydro generator to fit in to the mix somewhere, and I want to add a portable LFP pack to power a small outboard motor. There's a lot to think about :eek:
 
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