Renogy DCC50S + 100Ah Smart Lithium Install

Rapt0rUK I wired my system yesterday, switched battery on all good, except alternator charging not showing....Do I need to drive the van to get the red light on?
 
Rapt0rUK I wired my system yesterday, switched battery on all good, except alternator charging not showing....Do I need to drive the van to get the red light on?
No...you shouldn't need to. There is a delay, it takes about 15-20 seconds before the alternator charging light comes on, did you leave it running a while and check?
 
Yeah, left it a few minutes... went over wiring all looks good. Next step check the fuses are ok!
 
What voltage is your house battery at? If it's high enough then it wont charge anyway. But suspect it probably should be so check connections, fuses and any breakers you may have.
 
Do you have a clamp meter? I found that really helpful to check the voltage travelling around the system. Should help you identity any breaks or voltage drops.

@Dellmassive put me onto this one and it's been a big help!


If your house battery is deemed full by the Renogy box the battery status light should turn green from memory... what's the battery light displaying? Also, not sure this would make a difference but did select your battery type i.e. AGM, Li-ion on the Renogy box?
 
Battery status is green and set to lithium. All looks in order.. I’ll get a clamp meter! Cheers guys
So if the battery status is green, that means it's full.

Screenshot_20200915-144827_Adobe Acrobat.jpg

Try running the battery down a bit and see if the alternator charger kicks in. Your battery is full so it's probably stopped the charging.
 
Cheers mate, that’s what I’m hoping.. ordered a clamp meter anyway always handy to have.

Only problem is I have nothing attached to run down the battery! I may connect some lights..

On the Renogy battery how did you connect your cables the lug screws are M8 so my fusebox wiring etc don’t fit?
 
I had the same issue, bought a fusebox kit from Travelvolts but the crimps on the cable running from fusebox to battery had 6mm hole, so had to cut it off and swap over for an M8 one to fit the battery. You can buy the crimps from 12v Planet but you'll unfortunately also need one of these to crimp it properly:


and ideally some heat shrink sleeve.


I ended up buying all this stuff but to be honest it has easily paid for itself, i've had to make up so many other cables since and it's been great having all the kit to do it correctly.

One word of warning, i bought a cheap set of crimps from amazon and regretted it, they were crap, the metal was so soft, they weren't up to it, when you tightened things up they bent and became misshaped and i've had to replace them all since for peace of mind. So, worth just buying some decent quality ones from 12v planet. If you've got the same fusebox as me, from memory its a 6mm cable with 8mm crimp so you'll need one of these (pick the 8mm/M8 size hole):-

Copper Tube Terminals - 6mm² Cable

Postage is a bit steep so worth getting a few bits in one order, get a few if you haven;t used one of the crimping tools before so you can get the hang of it.
 
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So here's one for you...any idea what's going on here?

Just went out to the van to flush some water through the tap and keep it clean and the leisure battery was flat...

I've got a Smart Battery Protect installed, it was set to kick in and cut loads at 11.5v to stop the battery going into limp mode. It seemingly did its job as there's an alert in the app saying the battery is under voltage...despite that the state of charge on the battery is down to 3% and the DC-DC charger won't put charge in as it's under voltage i.e. limp mode.

The point of the Smart Protect was to avoid that ever happening (again). The plan in the event it got low, cut all loads and get the engine started to get the DC-DC to kick in and start charging again but no joy. I've had to plug into the Victron mains charger to wake the battery up.

I understand the voltage drop on a l-ion battery is right at the death and sudden, do you think the drop to 11.5v would be right down at the 3% SOC% mark? The smart protect has a l-ion profile which actually sets the cut off right down as low as 10v by default!

I've now created a custom profile to cut off at 11.9v to see how that performs but would you have expected that to happen?

Also no idea how the battery has gone down to 3% when it's been sat on the drive doing nothing... I drove it last week so unless there's something wrong with the DC-DC charger it was likely at 100% when i pulled up 7 days ago... no idea how its discharged so quickly by itself.
 
@raptor

so you have a Renogy Smart Lifepo4 and Renogy DC50 DC-DC.

got a few recent pics of the setup.

battery + dc-dc + Smrt Bat Protect.

++++

are all the loads connected VAN SIDE of the smart battery Protect?

are all CHARGE sources connected to the BATTERY SIDE id the smart battery Protect?

do you have a BM2 voltage logger to see whats going on?

what loads are connected to the 12v system?

how do you monitor the battery?

++++


have a look at the BM2 units


1624629196850.png



have you seen the Renogy BT-2 module and APP . .


to monitor the DC-DC + Battery?




1624629385587.png
 
Not too recent without taking the seat out...

Setup is pretty much as it was, only thing that's changed since the start of this thread, we had a Planar diesel heater fitted last year which I didn't wire in. I need to double check the wiring on that but from memory the display/control panel is a permanent drain but we're only talking 0.1Amp, nowhere near enough to flatten it in a week.

Setup is the Renogy DC-DC, Renogy 100AH lithium battery and the Renogy monitor screen (which plugs directly into the battery):


No BM2's but I'm getting my battery monitoring info between the battery charger stats, Renogy monitor and Smart Protect...

All the loads (potentially except the heater, will check) are connected to a fuse box with the Smart Battery Protect in the middle.

Interestingly, the mains charger starting voltage for the charge cycle shows as 11.20v so it certainly managed to drop below 11.5v... that suggests if the Smart Protect did its job and cut off at 11.5v...something else carried on draining it but that can only be the heater display.

That doesn't explain how it got down to 11.5v in the first place from a fully charged battery. We've had this heater setup in the van for a good year I would say and the battery has never been drained.

Will take another look at the wiring now and report back.

I hadn't that BT-2 module for the DC-Dc charger, would be useful to get more info beyond the LED's. I had just clocked this on their site though, looks like a new monitor that can do it all...looks like it has some voltage limiting capabilities so might let you kill the solar charging to get the full 50A from the alternator whilst driving without a cut-off switch.


Plugs into the charger rather than the battery like the BT-2, may be worth upgrading the current display to this but need to see exactly what it can do.
 
That BT-2 looks like a no brainer for £25.... look slike it provides all the same info as their new display but on your phone which is actually more convenient than mounting another display.
 
I got one. And done a review..

Bt2 on my dc50 mppt.

Its on my dc-dc or mttp thread.

Ill have a look.
 
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