Hi, how you doing? So I'm up at Fradley Junction now. I've moved on from the
Coventry Canal. I've been moored up in a really lovely remote spot. Nice and
quiet, and this does happen quite a lot. Two boats decided to come and moor, one in
front of me, one behind me. Really close, even though there was miles of empty
space and it was time to move on because, one would run their engine, virtually
constantly and another one ran their generator - which had a rather noisy
rattle, till sort of half past ten, quarter to eleven at night. Right next to
the bedroom, so time to move on. As I say I'm up at Fradley Junction, I'm carrying
on down to Shropshire Union. Boy this cupboard has been taking a lot of time.
As you know, I've got lithium batteries. I've put them in, I've been installing
them and that sort of thing and I'm working from wiring diagrams and there's
always one thing that you forget or you need to change. For
example, a switch for the MultiPlus. The MultiPlus needs, or it says in the manual
to have two 50mm cables for positive and two for negative and trying
to get four cables into a switch, oh that was tough. So I've changed a switch and
gone back to Onboard Energy. Which I seem to go there so regularly - to change the
switch or just little things like that, that I've needed to change and
tweak and conform to boat safety standards and that sort of thing.
I joined a Facebook group called 12 volt boating group. Really, really good group
if you've got any electrics, or you are thinking about getting a boat, or you're
just interested. There's two guys that kept cropping up
on that group that seemed to be very knowledgeable. One guy was
called Phil Brooke-Little he's a moderator of the group and he would seem to be
very popular and another guy called Graham Mills. Now Graham Mills, I got
talking to with regards to the lithium and he was keen to help me. He's got
an electronics and marine electrics background and he has been working with
electrics on boats for, longer than I've been alive. He said it not me!
And that gives you an indication of his of his level of experience with
electrics and boats and we have been doing wiring diagrams. He's got a good
knowledge of the boat safety scheme. What size cables, what size fuses and we're
currently up to version 9.1 of wiring diagrams. He enjoys doing it, he hasn't
been paid. I've offered him money but he doesn't like being paid. He does help
other people, he goes and drives to other boats and helps them. He goes on site
and for when he does that sort of thing he does, he only charges for expenses
effectively, or if he really needs to stay overnight, because he's based in
Eastbourne I think, down on the south coast of Britain. If he needs to stay
overnight he'll just charge for that but he's not in it for the money. He's in it
to help and learn. I've taught him some things about things I've learnt and he's
taught me - a lot of things. So together we've come up with a really good wiring
diagram and that's what I've been working off. Now as I say I've been back
and forth to Onboard Energy and they've been really helpful as well. Remember
you've got the 15% off you've got a Jono promo code which is simply
JONOPROMO and that gives you 15% off from the Onboard Energy website. I've
gone back and bought lots and lots of bits and pieces from them and they've
been really helpful as well. But changing to lithium has been tough
and hopefully I've ironed out quite a lot of the issues and the problems and
the boat safety scheme requirements and that sort of thing. But we're getting
there. {Jono} You're on the wrong side of the lock. Aren't you? Go on, no, not that way, that way.
Just a couple of mentions I'd like to make. A guy called Mark got in
contact with me whilst I was down on the Shropshire Union (Coventry Canal). He's got a YouTube channel
called Weir on the move. Spell weir as in the the water weir. Him
and his wife Julie and their dog Eric, they sold their house in Portsmouth in
November and they've bought a 65 foot wide-beam. Now 65 foot wide-beam, that's
masses of space inside but they've got a great YouTube channel. I'll include a
link in the description below and their what, their four months in, nearly four
months in, so it just gives you a completely different aspect of living on
the waterways in a much larger vessel. And then lastly I wanted to mention and
say thank you to one of my Patreon's. He's chosen the top level of Patreon
Dennis Jan Mortensen - I hope I've said your name correctly.
He's from Denmark and a load of stickers and things are on the way to you.
Basically Patreon is there as a bit of a tip jar. It appears at the end of my
videos as a link but I try not to talk about it a lot. I don't want to ram it down
people's throats. It's completely up to the people, the viewers if they want to
contribute at all but I wanted to say thanks to him and this video is
dedicated to him. And I also wanted to say thanks to all the other Patreons that
I've got. It really does help and I use the money that is contributed via
that platform for fuel. Because I drive around such a lot,
it helps contribute towards that. The cupboard is built and the three new
lithium batteries have a new home. Now they are fully charged, it's time to
connect them to the rest of the system. I'm using a DC modular bus bar from
Victron. They are normally used for 24 volt installations and they connect into
the Victron Lynx system. I just wanted to use them as a series of protected
connections for both the batteries and the rest of the wiring. Four good quality
busbars, as well as a number of fuse holders were very similar in price to
the Power In's. There is another model called a Lynx Distributor. The only
difference in that and the Power In were the fact the distributor has some lights,
some extra bolts for some fuses and the price was a lot higher. Everything else
was the same as the Power In, even all the mounting holes and brackets. Eager to
save some money I got to work adapting the Power In's to be similar to the
distributor option. I wanted to fuse each connection in and fuse each connection
out. I removed the plastic brackets and added a number of M8 bolts, nuts, flat
washers and spring washers. There are two 1000 Amp bus bars inside the unit and
by adding the additional bolts, I could also add four Mega-Fuses. I've purchased
two Power In's. One for the batteries in and one for the services out. Between
them I wanted to add a master battery switch, which totally isolates the
batteries from everything. This is a requirement for the Boat Safety Scheme.
I chose a Blue Sea 350 amp switch. Under that, on the negative feed I wanted to
add a shunt for a battery monitor. To keep the space required to a minimum,
instead of really short cables and lots of terminals, I chose
5 millimeter x 25 millimeter thick copper bar.
I'm individually connecting the batteries to the Power In busbar. I made
sure each of the cables from the battery to the busbar were exactly the
same length. This is the best way to connect batteries in parallel and
perfectly balances each battery. All the negative cables connect to the bottom
bus bar and all the positives connect to the top bus bar, via their own individual
mega-fuses. These are each rated at 150 amps. The shunt has a small circuit board
to one side and I wanted to avoid the components getting damaged. The Blue Sea
2719 Maxi Bus Insulating Cover fits the shunt perfectly, as well as
allow me to access the side cable ports and feed the copper bars at each end. The
batteries use a VE.Bus battery management system or BMS to manage their high and
low voltages as well as temperature. Each battery has two additional cables from
its sides. These each have a 3 pin plug, one female and one male. All the battery
monitor cables are daisy chained to the BMS. The BMS has two network ports and
four cable ports on the front. There is a positive supply, a negative supply plus
two control ports. Both of these ports output 12 volts at up to 2 amps if
everything's ok. If any cell within the bank of lithium
batteries report an under voltage of less than 2.5 volts, the load port on the
front of the BMS cuts the 12 volts supply. If any cell within the bank
report an over voltage of more than 4.2 volts or the temperature is high, it cuts
the 12 volt supply to the charge port. I'm connecting a standard RJ45 network
cable to the multi plus, from the top network port. This communicates via VE.Direct
to the MultiPlus and will turn the MultiPlus's inverter off and engage the
charger in a low voltage event and if there's 230 volt shoreline. It
will shut the MultiPlus off if there's a high voltage or over temperature event.
After I'd wired up the batteries busbars, MultiPlus and BMS it was time to set up the
battery monitor so I could see what is going on. This can all be done using the
VictronConnect App on my phone and Bluetooth. I clicked the cog to the top
right of the app. I then clicked on battery. After quite a bit of research
regarding the best settings for lithium batteries, these were the settings I
used. As I knew the batteries were 100% full after previously
charging them, I clicked the synchronise button at the bottom and forced the
battery monitor to set the battery state of charge to a 100%. In the
next episode I connect up my solar panels, discuss how I've wired at my MPPT
charge controller and how I've added an additional relay into the charge circuit.
Until next time, see you later.