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I looked over your spreadsheet and cannot fault your attention to detail, it truly was impressive. Keep the boat at 12 Volts. It is not worth it to do anything else. The cost and complexity will outweigh any small gains that you might achieve. I have met many boats, and unless they are running...

I used a Electrodaucus SBMS0 to control my 1000Ah Fortune 4s10p battery. Very happy with it, and it is 1/10 the cost of the batrium. I also added a active cell balancer from electric car parts company even though the Electrodaucus theoretically takes care of the balancing. It has been working...

You have been running your alternator with lead acid/AGM batteries for six years. Lithium is different. It will take all the alternator can give for as long as it needs. It has a totally different charge profile than lead and can take a charge faster. This can place a much larger power demand on...

I have a balmar mc612 alternator connected to a 12V 1000Ah LiFePho4 bank. I contacted Balmar about what settings should be programmed in, and they were super helpful. One of the items that they were insistent about installing was a alternator protection device...

I had similar issues with the fiddly tiny wires for ADC, and EXTIO3, and EXTIO4. I also had issues with the ribbon cable as my batteries were installed about 25 feet of wire run away from the SBMS0 (sailboat with batteries under a bunk and SBMS0 at the nav station). For the tiny wires I had a...

Hi Argosy, The switch I am using is a regular 1 Both 2 Off switch. It is a Make before Break so that theoretically the alternator never sees an open when you switch from 1 to 2. All of the battery switches are designed that way. My Balmar is on a serpentine belt add on kit, which was stupidly...

I would highly recommend the serpentine belt add on. I needed to shim the water pump pulley with some very small washers taped to get it perfectly alighted the crankshaft pulley. For the alternator to sit correctly, I had to have a special shim made by a machinist and some work on the alternator...

I also am using the Electrodaucus BMS, so there are no fets or relays to shut the battery down. Electrodaucus does not control the battery, it controls the loads or charging sources which to me was a clear advantage. No power electronics to get hot, just monitor the cells, the overall battery...

Hi everyone, I ended up going with the samlex inverter. Two reasons, their tech support was more responsive, and anything that says it gets too hot to sit on a wood panel (in my opinion) doesn’t belong on a fiberglass sailboat that has lots more combustible things on board than a piece of plywood.

Just some quick math to see if replacing a thruster battery makes sense. given 700 amps @12 V. Going online, and plugging into google “resistance of 2/0 copper wire“ just for giggles We get AWG Diameter Copper resistance inch Milli ohms per meter 0000 (4/0) 0.4600 0.1608 000 (3/0)...

I have been buying battery cable at bestboat wire.com, and other assorted heavy duty terminal lugs etc. I am now in New Zealand and the site comes up as https://www.boatwireusa.com/ They just did not have anything in 18-22 awg for the fortune 100Ah 10mm metric posts. DigiKey had them and...

Okay, I just read the entire thread from the top again to refresh my memory. I would seriously take a look at the Electrodaucus SBMS0 rather than the Chargery. It is in my opinion a much more elegant solution and there is no chance of your batteries dropping offline. The Chargery just seemed...

Nice picture. Which power supply are you using? I have been looking for a reasonably priced variable voltage and current supply.

I have a Iota DLS - X 55 Amp battery charger that has served flawlessly for 6 years on my old AGM batteries and I WAS actually really happy with it. It has a little plug in module in the back that turns what is basically a fixed power supply into a decent cheap battery charger. The problem is I...

Great plan. Balmar knows their stuff. Since you say that you are limited to 40 amps charging current on each of your two Lithium ion batteries, for a total of 80 Amps, you should look at the Amp Manger feature. It is located in the Advanced Program features and is a setting that will limit the...

I am wondering what xantrex meant when they said it is not designed to monitor the LiFePO4 batteries. The link pro and link lite (which I have) both measure current into and out of the battery via a shunt. Yes, the “fuel gauge” display which is based on the voltage drop of lead acid batteries...

Hello everyone, I am on a 47 foot sail boat and my 800AH AGM battery system is in need of replacement. I have 500W of solar going to a morning star mppt controller. I contacted morning star and they have sent me a programming sheet to reconfigure for LFP. No worries there. I also have a 90...

I posted this on the Marine Forum as a new thread, but when I searched for IOTA I ran across this thread and decided to cross post it here. I am not trying to hijack this thread, but the IOTA poblem is mentioned a lot here. I have a Iota DLS - X 55 Amp battery charger that has served flawlessly...

@Cal, What Iota model do you have and what modifications did you make to shut it down? I have the DLS-X 55 and I want to be able to also shut it down if the Electrodaucus BMS says it is over voltage? Any hints would be appreciated. I just posted a new thread in the Marine Forum, as I am on a...

I had a bit of hesitation at first with putting 10 of the Fortune cells in parallel knowing that if one went bad, it might be difficult to find. Then I thought, these things were supposed to be for underground mining and SHOULD have some attempt at quality control. To be fair, we are not...

The DLS-X has a plug in module on the back, bulk is 14.7 volts which is just too high. There are no other jacks, plugs, connections, switches or anything else. I agree 55 amps isn’t going to get me very far or very fast with 1200Ah if it was the only charger. The Iota is running in parallel...

I am intrigued about this because the time that you can motor anywhere seems very limited. You stated a 200amp draw, and you are building a 300Amp hour battery bank. So in low speed operation, using 100 amps, you would get only 3 hours of motoring before the battery is totally drained. How much...

I have two nearly 10 year old Kyocera KD250GX-LFB2 > 250 Watt Solar Panels, for a total of 500 watts. They still work great, but technology has moved on, efficiency has gone up etc. I have seen newer panels that claim to be able to provide 400 Watts of total power instead of 250 Watts out of...

I was wondering if anyone has a recommendation for a power supply to top balance 16 of the Fortune 100Ah cells. In life you get 3 choices, good, fast, or cheap, but you can only pick 2. I could buy a 500mA supply and spend the rest of my life waiting for the bank to balance. Or I could buy a...

Thanks for the double votes on parallel. I am going to buy all new cells and I really like the option to be able to disconnect to divide and conquer if possible. Great idea. My old batteries were 4 Fullriver 400Ah 6 volt cells, hooked up in series-parallel. Each of these things weighs over 120...

I am in Mexico, so there is also a bit of a language barrier going on. I do not want the microinverter type panels, or anything like that. I was going to place them in parallel for my 12 V system. I was assuming that the rating voltages would be too high etc. I really need to go back and look...

I have a Morningstar Tristar 45 amp MPPT controlller. It is set up for 12 V output but can take a maximum solar input of 125V. The Kyocera 250W panels are wired in parallel for 500 Watts and are specified at 30V open circuit. From what I am hearing, as long as I remain below the maximum...

I had earlier contacted Morningstar about upgrading a 45 amp MPPT controller to 800 watts at 12 V. I asked if it was going to self destruct and their answer was that it would just limit itself to the 45 amps, but nothing bad would ever happen. So for maybe a bit of time during the sunniest part...

Lead acid starting batteries are cheap in first world countries. Try buying one in Panama, the price is 3x for the same battery as in the USA, and there is no such thing as Cosco. If I was in the USA which is the land of everything, then I also would keep the hybrid lead acid and for starting...