Tag: Liontron

Electricity upgrades for our Toyota Hilux

With the next Toyota Hiace and the Saurer 2DM around the corner waiting to be converted, I thought it was time for consolidating our vehicular electrical installations.

But before going into details, some history first: In 2019, we started on the VW Calkifornia T6 with a Super B Epsilon 12V90Ah LiFePO4 battery as a simple drop-in replacement and added a Votronic SMI 1200 ST inverter to it. And this was probably where I made my first two mistakes. At that time, I decided for Votronic and against Victron Energy. And I did not pay attention to the non-existing programmability and extensibility features of the Votronic inverter.

And when we later, during the COVID summer of 2020, got our Hymer B-MC I WhiteLine and I installed a Liontron 12V200Ah battery with another Votronic SMI 1700 ST-NVS. And to make things a little more complicated, I added a DC-DC charger: also from Votronic – an emerging pattern.

Once with a vendor stick with that vendor? There a pros and cons to it as we will later see.

When we later prepared our Hilux for our first longer trip to Loch Watenan, I opted for a Liontron 12V200Ah battery again (for the reason Liontron being way cheaper than Super B). And for the inverter/charger, I went for Votronic again (SMI 1200 and the same DC-DC charger 1212-45) .

But when I tried to get the DC-DC charger working, I realised that the D+ signal was not available on the Hilux. All in all, I did not get it to work in any configuration and looked for alternatives – which came in the form of the Victron Orion-Tr Smart DC-DC Charger family. And when I had to add an AC charger (where in the Hymer I could use the existing AC charger) to load the Liontron battery “on-shore”, I chose the Victron Blue Smart IP22 Charger.

So, at that time there was some kind of tie between Victron and Votronic. And the setup was getting more complicated and more complicated. And I am not only talking about the diminishing space in the trunk of the Hilux.

If I had known about the Victron MultiPlus series at that time I could have saved me a lot of headaches and complications.

It was shortly after our first and very successful trip to Loch Watenan, when we got rid of the Hymer and I added the battery from it as a second battery to the Hilux. And I got 2 more Victron DC-DC chargers. But I sticked to my Votronic inverter. And this is how the final layout looked like:

Toyota Hilux setup with 2 Liontron 12V 200Ah batteries, 4 DC-DC 30A chargers

This all worked well end of 2021 when one of the Liontron batteries did not want to charge properly anymore. The combined cell voltage stayed low at 13.1V with no single cell near at 3.5V and the internal BMS still reported 100% SOC.

So it was time for a change. And while doing that eliminting some design shortcomings of the current installation:

  1. Invertert has a power maximum of 1200W.
  2. AC charging is limited 30A.
  3. Both 200Ah batteries are operating separated with one of them feeding the inverter and the other feeding the 12V DC sources.
  4. Each pair of DC-DC chargers is bound to a single battery.
  5. The alternator cannot feed all 4 DC-DC but only 3 chargers at the same time.
  6. The inverter cannot be controlled wirelessly.
  7. The whole system is not integrated.
  8. Fuse boxes are unlabelled fuses from AliExperss.
  9. No bus bars in the system.

So, here is the “new” setup:

  1. Replace the Votronic SMI 1200 ST inverter with a Victron MultiPlus 12/1600/70-16 Compact (which happens to have a similar form factor as the Votronic).
    • increase AC charging power to 70A
    • increase nverter power to 1300W
  2. Add a Victron 500A SmartShunt to compensate for the lack of BMS integration.
  3. Remove the 30A AC charger (to gain space for the bus bar, see next).
  4. Add a Victron 1000A Lynx Distributor bus bar.
  5. Optionally, add a VE.Bus Smart Dongle or a Cerbo GX / Raspberry with VenusOS.
  6. Have both batteries run in parallel to feed the inverter and the DC sources at the same time and thus reducing the maximum current at 1300W to 65A (when both batteries are dropping down to the minimu of 4* 2.5V = 10V) or considerably lower when running at 14V (45A) .

But the “best” of it, I then got rid of all the Votronic devices and can integrate and configure more easily with Victron. And I can do the same in the Saurer and HiAce.

I hope I can start with the conversion mid of March and will post updates on the way.

So, what do you think? (And no, I have no affiliation with Victron at all.)

30 Days into using the Victron MultiPlus 12/1600/70-16 inverter and a Liontron 12V 80Ah with our Swift Sprite Caravan

The Caravan we got last year did not come with an inverter, so getting coffee in the morning or running a microwave was only possible when our main generator was running. And the installed battery for 12V support had a rather small capacity. This was clear to us from the beginning, as we eventually wanted to connect the Caravan to our EVE 280Ah cells.

But since we got our Starlink internet and our router did not seem to run easily on DC power, we needed -in addition to the temporary morning AC coffee spike – a more permanent AC solution.

So, I grabbed an existing Liontron 12V 80Ah battery that was sitting on the shelf along with a Victron Energy MultiPlus 12/1600/70-16 charger/inverter and connected the inverter AC Output to the CEE16-1 AC input of the caravan and the inverter AC Input to one of the phases of my JCB G20QS generator (of course, all via Neutrik powerCON TRUE1 TOP connectors and H07RN-F3G2.5 cable).

For the connection between the inverter and the battery I used a 35mm2 cable and Klauke DIN 46235 compression cable lugs on one end and insulated ferrules on the other end. In between, I added Anderson SB 175 connectors with 1383 lugs for quick disconnects and crimped as shown here. For the fuse I used a Schneider Electric 125A DC MCB, as I do not expect higher loads in this setup.

Of course, first I updated the firmware of the inverter and configured it work with the battery:

  1. Setting the AC input to 16A
  2. Setting the battery type to LiFePO4
  3. Setting the charge current to 70A (which is over the recommend amount of 50A, but see below for details)

As I did not want to connect a Cerbo GX to the system, I just used the VictronConnect App. Maybe I add a VE.Bus Smart dongle later on, or I connect some GX nevertheless. Who knows … Until now, it needs a wired connection to the inverter to see its status.

After powering on the generator, I confirmed everything was roughly working as expected. During the first run, the SOC was shown as 100% though the BMS of the battery internal saw it differently. In addition, the reported Amps and temperature were seen differently, as well. So, even that I set the inverter over the recommended maximum of 50A for the battery, the actual charge power was never much higher than the actual maximum).

This is what the inverter saw (100% SOC, 14.05V DC cell voltage, charging at 64A):

MultiPlus charging the Liontron battery via the generator

And this is, what the Liontron BMS reported (76% SOC, 13.8V DC cell voltage, charging at 55.5A):

The SOC as seen by the Liontron battery BMS

In the end, the BMS stopped charging when it thought its batteries were full. And the inverter did not complain. However, I noticed that the cells were really not in balance (with a delta of 200mV between the lowest and highest voltage).

Discharging was ok, as well. However, I soon realised that the 100A discharge current could not be achived in my setup. The inverter tried to draw power and the BMS cut off with a “Discharge over-current” (OCD). SO, still no coffee via our Nespresso machine (and no microwave either, for that matter).

So, what is the take away of all this?

  1. It works and now, I can run the Internet all day.
  2. All in all, it is a relatively simple and quick setup.
  3. The Liontron battery does somehow not live up to its specs (and yes, I know the battery could be a size bigger for what I want to achieve; but I did not want to buy an additional battery for this temporary solution).
  4. It is way cheaper and more flexible than to buy this “off the shelf”.
  5. Maybe, I add a Victron SmartShunt to get a more accurate SOC reporting (as I do not see any other way to integrate the BMS with the inverter).
  6. Charging of the battery is quite fast when running the generator.