Recent content by tpenfield

Following along and interested to see what you finally come up with. My contribution to the thought process so far is consideration of the following (with enough buffer): Ability to capture energy (Solar Panels) 3,200 (ish) watts (x 10 hours/day) = 30 KWh Ability to store energy (Batteries)...

Solar panels on a car . . . not a bad idea, but as well noted, the power would only be a supplement to what may be needed. It is a nice thought that while your car is sitting in a workplace parking lot all day, that it would be re-gaining some of its charge.

I think I'm good with the way I have them connected. :)

I'll keep the wring options under consideration, but I'm onto the DC-DC charger configuration and my alternator woes. Here are the 4 prescribed ways of configuring batteries in parallel as shown on the Victron website. I have essentially used the a combination of the first and second method...

While we are concerning ourselves with wire and bus bar resistance and the potential voltage differences . . . 00 AWG copper has a resistance of approximately 0.079 ohms/1000 feet. My 33 inch battery lead wires (call it 3 feet) have a resistance of . . . 0.079/1000 x 3 = 0.000237 ohms @...

There is one additional consideration that the installation manual makes note of in larger battery arrays (4P, etc), is to join the batteries together for balancing. They don't show it in the simple 2 parallel installation, but it still could apply, because it is one of the preparation steps...

Just reading up on the Orion TR Smart, I plan to re-wire it to be remote activated. The User manual described a few ways of remote activation; a couple of them involving ignition key sensing. #1) Using the H-pin The switch in the diagram would essentially be the ignition voltage when the key...

The fire extinguisher that you see in the pictures is a fixed mount automatic system, typically found it boats (often referred to as a 'halon' system, although I don't think they use halon). It is heat activated and also sends a signal to the engine ignition system and dash panel display. Here...

Yes, I was thinking that was an issue. Of course, I had someone tell me it would be OK, but perhaps it was not good guidance. Thank you. 👍

Actually, I hoping to get some guidance on the Orion Tr Smart DC-DC charger . . . which is not happy, based on my testing. I have the settings as follows if I recall correctly: Set up as a charger Standard alternator Smart LiFePO4 battery Using on/off jumper Engine shutdown protection enabled...

The photo obscures the view of a portion of the cables, but it is wired just like the manual shows. The diagrams in post #25 are different than the manual states. Now, I don't often read the manual for things like this, but in this case I did. . . . sort of . . . I do see that you altered...

A quick update . . . After some testing and trial operation . . . The solar charging is working fine. Charging from shore power via the Xantrex Freedom SW 2012 and the ProNautic 1203P are both working fine. Charging from the engine alternators . . . not so much. I ran the Port (left) engine...

Well, maybe take it up with the folks at LiTime . . . Their connection instructions per the manual are this: . Which I have done. As mentioned, the cables are a bit longer than I'd like (33 inches).

Here are a couple of 'finished' pictures . . . battery boxes and ID labels in place. The system seems to be working well. Not much solar, due to cloudy/rainy days. I have not fired up the engines either, since overnight temperatures still get a bit cold. . . .

Yes . . . one would think that the BMS in the LFP batteries could be modified so that it does a slow enough shut-off to give the electric field in the alternator time to collapse. Might not be much time is needed (1-2 seconds ?). As you mentioned . . . I think the Balmar module puts enough...