Cold weather, Lithium batteries, Victron Shunt and a false SOC reading.. . . . Cold weather GOTCHA to be aware of.
we`ve had a recent cold spell in the UK, and down to
-5C in London, which only happens a few times of year.
i love it as its a great opportunity to test cold weather performance of all this tech. .
in this case the awesome
ROAMER SB230gen2. -
Roamer LiFePO4 Gen2 230Ah Seatbase battery -- "How I Done It" -- Its a Lithium LifePo4, its got massive capacity @ 230Ah, its got massive discharge performance 250A/500A, its Bluetooth, its a Roamer !!, its exciting . . . . . its coming soon - the full test . . . . ...
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in particular the cold weather protection that kicks in below 0C. . .
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here we can see its 634am in the morning (18/1/23) the battery is -2c and its showing "charging off"
this is the expected mode of operation where the battery will allow outgoing power, but is actively blocking any incoming power.
here you can see the "UTC/1" alarm - that shows the battery BMS is blocking any charge power.
the battery BMS was showing 99% SOC . . . which had slightly drifted from the true battery reading of 93%,
this drift is caused by the battery BMS not detecting all of the low power draws (below 500mA) . . . this is normal for nearly all lithium battery's, infact the ROAMER is one of the better ones, detecting power draws down to 500mA.
but the true battery SOC can be monitored with a Victron shunt . . . . (which will monitor down to 0.1A / 100mA)
the Gotcha is what happened next . . .
while watching the reading the Victron shunt just jumped from 92% SOC to 100% SOC. . . right in front of my eyes.
hold on - whaaaaaaat ?
it can be seen here:
you can see the temp is still below Zero, so the battery is blocking any incoming charge. (so there is no way the SOC should increase at all)
but you can see the shunt SOC data suddenly jump from 92% - 100% SOC instantly .?
the reason for this is the way the Victron shunt is programmed to detect the 100% SOC point. . .
we can see the ROAMER battery internal voltage is 13.26v . .
but with the engine running. . . the Renogy DC-DC charger is putting out 14.4v to try and charge everything up. . .
checking the Victron settings. . . we can see that the trigger point is 14.2v for 60seconds with less than 3% tail current . . .
so at this point the shunt assumes that battery is FULL and not accepting any charge. . . . because its detecting the 14.4v on the battery terminals, and not seeing any power going into the battery.
but in reality . . . the battery IS NOT charged, its just protecting itself by blocking the charge power. . . due to the cold temp conditions.
so the 100% SOC reported by the Victron shunt is false. . . .at this point.
you can see the point when the SOC jumped from 92% to 100% here ( while the temp is below 0c):
and here:
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so what now?
well once again we can see how battery BMS and SHUNT SOC readings can fool you. . .
on this occasion due to cold weather. . .
this fix is simple, and the same as the
BMS DRIFT issue i highlighted before. . . - just fully charge the battery.
as with the BMS drift. . . . even though the battery is showing 100% soc, it will accept a charge - untill its full.
if you have a Victron charger that meters charged power you can use that to quality the amount of BMS drift. . .
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so if its cold. . . . . or the vans been sitting for a while don't 100% trust those SOC readings . .
get the battery charged up again and your good to go.. . . . . . even though that charge may take a bit longer than expected.
related - BMS XMAS DRIFT
and a B2B charger a solar panel an MPPT some cable some heat shrink bus bars chrimper cable cutter stripper( we'll talk about that one later :rofl: ) mega or midi fuses..........it don't matter which type of van you have a combi a camper what ever.....there always gonna be a whole host of...
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