Batrium for marine application - 48v@480ah and 12v@480ah.

Patrick St-Onge

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Joined
Aug 24, 2018
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Hi Jaron, this is Patrick here giving this another take.

Our first preliminary discussions went a bit sour but I am willing to give this another try as I must admit the requirements I had put forth were quite extensive.

I revised it all and I would say I am actually willing to more or less comply with crafting a "generic" solution based on what Batrium can do at the moment. No fancy wishes.

In the shopping cart Icurrently have:

- 2 X starter kits :WatchMon4 + 16 x BlockMon-M8 + SoC% sensor
- 2 XExpansion Board Upgrade Kit - WatchMon4 48V
1

- 1 X16x BlockMon M8 cell monitors with cables

** No more Complex Alternator to handle, no more redundancy and zero downtime if a cell dies, etc...

Topology is:

48v bank: 16s2p ->3.2v@240ah = 48v@480ah
12v bank: 4s2p ->3.2v@240ah = 12v@480ah

Each bank with it's own Victron ColorGX.

-You previously mentioned that somemarine specific enhancements has to be implemented - should I purchase and we deal with that after?

- YetIhave questions on a specific scenario, eg a cell fails say in the 48v bank:
  • Maybe Batrium sees the cell is dying on time -> Disconnects both the load and charge bus -> yes?
  • or
  • Somehow this is not detected on time and the string's fuse blows or the string's contactor is opened/the string is taken offline manually.
  • Now we have a half bank still useable -> how does Batrium handle that?
  • It is important I understand what to do, what can be done to restore power to the electric propulsion as this could be quite critical, eg run on only one string - (full manual override?)
Many thanks and a great day to you.
 
Fault conditions based on individual cell voltages are able to trigger disconnects. You can also trigger disconnects based on overall pack voltage.

Your ability to have some reduced power propulsion in the event ofpartial pack failure will depend on how you configure and wire the battery.
 
Sean said:
Fault conditions based on individual cell voltages are able to trigger disconnects. You can also trigger disconnects based on overall pack voltage.

Your ability to have some reduced power propulsion in the event ofpartial pack failure will depend on how you configure and wire the battery.

Thanks Sean!

I think it is pretty simple in the end.
A cell dies,Watchmon sees a critical voltage dropand criticaldisconnects the whole bank.
I identify to which string that faulty cell belongs and isolate that string.

I override the critical disconnect and now have half capacity : here "override" has to be defined...
Can I do that through the toolkit software or should I have additional manual contactors to manually bypass it all for the duration of the emergency?
These steps I need to define :)

Cheers!
 
Manually isolating (by physical disconnection etc) is atrivial task - if you want some form of semi automated isolation system you'd need to have contactors on all cells, the wiring of which would be overly complex for this application.

Note I've used the word isolate rather than bypass - you need the failed cell to be removed from the circuit. Unless it's very well hidden the toolkit doesn'thave a cell isolate trigger function, but I'm sure it could if you asked Jaron nicely (but I'm not convinced such a system has any advantages over manual cell isolation and reconnection)
 
No need for complexity!
All I want is a quick way to restore propulsion if a cell goes bad.
Since there are two 16 cells strings, I simply want to isolate the faulty cell/string and use the remaining string while I replace the faulty cell.
Once the faulty string is isolated, I still have to reconnect the whole bank that Watchmon most probably critical-disconnected.
At that point maybe I can manually discard that cell or change the thresholds on it so that the bank critical contactor is closed again and normal-reduced-capacity operations resume.
Then I can bring the boat to safety, change the cell and deal with half of my cells being totally unbalanced with the other half.
 
First of all this is not Batrium official support here so if you have any questions towards Batrium you need to contact their support.

Secondly there is no built in Short protection. There is fault and over current protection built in. So if you are afraid of short you need to have proper breaker for that.
I recommend to connect
battery -> Batrium -> Shunt trip based breaker - > Load/charge
Doing this the batrium will continue to monitor the system even though it is tripped. And if you at same time can have a breaker that have trip feedback to Batrium system the batrium will know if it have tripped outside its own preferences like short current scenario.

Batrium will tell you what cell that triggered the fault as long as you let it live and thats why the batrium shouldnt be disconnected.

---> Maybe Batrium sees the cell is dying on time -> Disconnects both the load and charge bus -> yes?
if you configured it correctly

----> Somehow this is not detected on time and the string's fuse blows or the string's contactor is opened/the string is taken offline manually.
Now we have a half bank still useable -> how does Batrium handle that?
Handle what? If its opened its offline and its not running. You can of course dismantle and reconfigure how ever you want. If you want it redundant and such you should have 2 different systems doing its own thing and it should be fine. If you go with 1 wm only you need to reconfigure it when taking a string offline and since you take one offline you either need to reconfig and remove longmons from config or just disable fault protection.

----> It is important I understand what to do, what can be done to restore power to the electric propulsion as this could be quite critical, eg run on only one string - (full manual override?)
Once again depends on how you configure it. If you want it fully redundant you make 2 identical systems for the propulsion system. And design so it can run on 1 bank without issues ie n+1 system.

Lastly your other questions you need to talk with Batrium since we cannot answer on anything in terms of if its correct for you or not. If you are unsure of how to set it up or how to operate it and you do know that its critical it might be best to have some company set a system up for you. All boils down to how much time you want to spend on it. To what level you want to feel comfortable and such.
 
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