Hi there, thanks very much for watching.
Welcome to Snowmageddon! Mmm, probably not.
Some areas of the United Kingdom have had half a meter of snow but certainly
not here.
The ice has stopped me moving though. I
knew the ice was coming. I knew the
temperatures were going to go down, as
most people that live on narrowboats do,
they sort of keep an eye on the weather.
So I moored up here, got the car close by.
The ice is probably about six centimetres thick at the moment. Over the
last few days, about four days ago, it
started icing over and the first night
was really noisy. There's nothing
you can do because as the ice froze and
you move in the boat, or the wind moves
the boat back and forward, there was
scratching and crunching and all sorts. It was a bit of a restless night that
was but as the ice got thicker, now Alice
is rock solid in the ice, regardless of how much you move around in the boat.
It's like actually living on land again.
The ice is solid around it, although
it is starting to melt already. I can
sort of hear crunching noises again, so
it won't be long, probably in the middle
of the next week that I will carry on
moving towards the Shropshire Union
Canal but for now I have been working
inside. I've been building the electrics
cupboard that I'm going to be putting
all this equipment in. I've had the Victron lithium batteries for just over
a week now, very, very different. I haven't
needed to charge the batteries using the
generator. I haven't needed to charge the
batteries using the engine and the
alternator, at all. Solar has done it all.
Now considering many days, a bit like
this, dull are overcast,
not much sun, the solar has been coping
really, really well. The other bonus is
the fact that I've got my fridge back on
inside. On 24/7 no problems whatsoever.
Yesterday, when building the electrics
cupboard, I was cutting using a jigsaw,
mains jigsaw from the inverter. 700 watt
jigsaw no problems whatsoever. No engine
running nothing needed, lithium batteries
'like yeah, whatever'. The actual voltage
didn't change at all and after about an
hour, an hour and a half of me on and off
using it, the percentage hadn't changed
even 1%, which is fantastic. So what have
I been doing whilst the ice has stopped
me from going anywhere. Well I've been
cracking on with the cupboard inside,
that's where all my electrics are going
to go and it's been quite tough because
the the boat tapers in at that point, so
I've had to chop the back of the
cupboard off and bring the rear of the
actual cupboard in as well as add vents
and things so let's see how I've been
getting on. I've decided to use a normal 1 metre wide
kitchen cabinet as I wanted it to blend in with the rest of the kitchen. It's at the
far end of the port side of Alice. Below the cupboard, I lifted a section of the floor
and removed some of the brick ballast. Not only do I need to counter balance the additional
weight this area will hold, but I also wanted to create a void area within the bilge. The
base plate of the boat is here and this section of the boat is a good depth below the water
level. It's always cool and I wanted to use this to my advantage.
The cupboard will house my batteries, inverter and solar charge controller. All these items
can get warm. So, I have created additional ventilation in the cupboard.
On the bulkhead to the engine bay there is a hole. It's normally used to route cables
and pipework. It's big enough for me to also include a ventilation duct between the
cupboard and the engine bay where there is plenty of external ventilation. In the engine
bay, I will be fitting an inline blower. On the command of a temperature switch, this
will suck warm air from the cupboard outside. In turn this will pull cool air up from the
bilge below the cupboard. This not only replaces hot air with cool but it also keeps the bilge
nicely ventilated.
As the boat tapers in here, I've needed to reduce the cupboards depth. Using battens
along the cupboards sides, I've fitted a thick sheet of plywood for strength. And then
to that the standard, relatively thin rear board, mainly to keep the cupboard clean and
looking the same.
The three lithium batteries are positioned to the left of the cupboard and to the right
the Victron MultiPlus inverter and charger. This has lots of good ventilation all around
it. Plus as this is the item that gets the hottest, the cool bilge air vent is right
in front of it.
After watching my last video, a really helpful guy from Victron got in contact and highlighted
there were some changes regarding the temperature environment.
The latest datasheet from Victron for my lithium batteries has been updated to recommend charging
from 5 degrees Celsius and above. I expect this has to been changed to avoid confusion
and to lengthen the lifespan of the batteries. But it just goes to show, lithium's don't
like being charged at low temperatures.
Talking of charge, it was time to complete my initial lithium battery charge.
The manual states they come approximately 50% charged and as they are smart batteries,
I could see, via Bluetooth and the Victron Connect app on my phone, the voltage of each
of the batteries cells and the battery temperature. That was before they even came out of their
boxes.
I could see each battery required a firmware update. This was all done using the app.
As my batteries will be used in parallel I could charge all three at once but to avoid
one of the cells reaching the over voltage faster than another from a different battery,
I charged each battery for its initial charge, separately.
I used the MultiPlus to complete this initial full charge and supplied its power from my
generator.
Before I do that however, I needed to update the Firmware of the MultiPlus's VE Bus.
This adds functionality to work with my lithium batteries.
This is not for the faint of heart and needs a thorough understanding of what you are doing.
If in any doubt, I'd strongly recommend you ask a Victron Engineer to complete this
next stage for you.
The firmware will reset your MultiPlus back to its default settings and if you use the
wrong firmware version, you can damage the MultiPlus. But in the true spirit of Journey
with Jono, here is how I did it.
I downloaded and installed the latest VE Flash software version from the Victron website.
I've included links in the description below.
It is suitable for windows computers only so I, using a Mac, ran windows via Parallels.
When you remove the front cover of the MultiPlus you will see the main circuit board. On the
front of the large chip to the top left of the board there is a sticker with a 7-digit
number.
As you can see, mine starts with 2609. Write that number down. At the bottom right of the
MultiPlus there is a label with the serial number, it starts with HQ. Contact your Victron
representative with both numbers and ask for the correct Firmware file.
I made sure there were no other items connected to the MultiPlus. I downloaded and ran the
VE Flash software and chose 'Update the firmware'. I followed the software commands
and selected the correct firmware version. It's important to ensure the first 4 digits
of the firmware file are the same as the first 4 digits of the label on the chip. In my case,
it was 2609.
I auto selected the port that the USB communicates on and turned the MultiPlus off.
I connected a network cable to one of the MultiPlus's network ports. Using a Victron
MK2 to USB interface I connected it to the network cable from the MultiPlus and plugged
the MK2 into the computers USB port.
I then switched the MultiPlus on and the software recognised it and started to upload the firmware
file to the chip. After a few nail biting moments, the firmware
was fully updated. Phew, time for some nice snow scene shots to lower the stress levels!
I then downloaded and installed VE Configure. The purpose of this software is to communicate
with the MultiPlus, tell it, I now have Lithium batteries and also add a small programme to
it, called an assistant.
After running the VE Configure and connecting to the MultiPlus I navigated to the Charger
tab. As you can see the MultiPlus was configured for flooded deep discharge batteries. Clicking
the Battery Type button, I selected Lithium Ion Phosphate.
It updates the MultiPlus to the following settings.
As this was the first time I was charging the batteries, Victron recommend you charge
at a low rate of C/20 or less. Or 5% of a 100Ah battery which is 5 Amps in my case.
So, I changed the charge current to 5.
It's also recommended to give the batteries an absorption voltage of 14.2 volts for several
hours to initially fully balance the cells. So, I changed the absorption time from 1 to
3.
Next I clicked on the Assistants Tab. I clicked the Add Assistant button and selected
VE.Bus BMS from the dropdown menu. Once it was installed I clicked the Start
Assistant button.
The Battery management system from Victron communicates with the MultiPlus and in a low
battery voltage situation it changes the MultiPlus from inverting to charger only. In a high
battery voltage situation, it regulates the charge voltage to allow for the cells to fully
balance.
The VE Bus BMS assistant was then fully installed.
That's all the settings I needed to change so I clicked the send settings button to the
left of the main area. Selected modified settings and the changes and new BMS assistant were
sent to the MultiPlus.
I connected one battery at a time to the MultiPlus and started the charging. I purposely moored
up away from other boats and houses. As the charge amperage was only 5 amps I knew I would
need to run my generator a long time. Each of the batteries were luckily about 60% full
to start with but it did take a good 8-9 hours for each battery to increase in voltage and
charge. I kept a close eye on each of their charges using the Bluetooth Victron Connect
App. The charge seemed to go up to around 14.17 volts and around 3.6 volts for each
cell. They stabilised and then started to drop. I knew then that the batteries were
full.
Two days later I connected them in parallel to my Victron Power In panels which I am using
as covered bus bars. I'll be discussing those and my new battery monitor in the next
episode. Until then, see ya later.