DIY Serial battery driver for Victron GX

Thank you. It’s working now.

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The forum software only grants that permission after you’ve spent enough time on the forum (read 30 posts, spend at least 10 minutes, enter 5 topics, and so forth), or if an admin bypasses it. It is there to prevent spam-bots from joining and immediately spamming everyone. Sadly it means new users may not be able to immediately DM.

Interestingly, we had at least two cases of new users who got their first posts quarantined because they typed them too fast and were mistaken for bots… :slight_smile:

@Louisvdw I’d be interested of all the drivers you’ve implemented and the hardware you’ve seen would you still recommend the LTT for low current eg. <40A purposes?

The JBD/LTT is the most flexable of the lot in my opinion (you can set all the parameters which is very powerful), but some of the others make for intresting options (JKBMS with active balancers is very nice).
The Daly had a good reputation when everyone was using dumb BMS, but the smart Daly is not up to par with the rest of the smart BMS options from what I have seen. It’s the only one I would not buy myself. The Sinewealth Daly is not that bad though (it’s normally used in the 3/4 sell versions).

FYI it seems JKBMS has been taken off Aliexpress and Alibaba. Not sure where else to get it.

Between the LTT and JBD, any feelings @Louisvdw for 20/30A to go in a low current solar pole with loads of max 50W and usually 12/24V.

They all have the same features, so just pick the model that match your requirements.

Here is a link where you can buy the JKBMS on AliExpress

My 2 cents, and I stand to be corrected.

The JK BMS I’m watching with big eyes. Waiting for Any to install it and test it on his live system, over a few weeks, at a price tag of $199 is something that makes me ask: So how much more benefit will one get?

The biggest JK BMS can do wot 5amps balancing (?).

The one video of Andy that reminded me so of my own experiences, was when he tested the passive balancer at high SOC trying to “contain” runaway cells, having read what experts here have said about MOSFET’s and the fact that I’m dealing with huge AH cells, makes me unsure if active balancers are the answer, having had to deal with consistently unbalanced cells.

It is a bastard to make cells chill on high SOC when a cell shoots out. Happens in seconds.

5amps active balancer vs that mother of a “Bulb” Andy uses … no contest.

A balanced bank, THAT is the key in my view … at this point in time, as I’m also learning by the seat of my pants.

Methinks, an added level of protection if cells go out of whack, say a Delta of wot +0.05v, let the driver intervene and drop the charge current drastically - it works if one does it manually.

My 2 cents worth.

Active balancer transfer the energy from a high cell to the lower cells, while a passive balancer will use a resister to drain the high cell’s excess energy.

So active vs passive is just using the energy more efficiently. There is no other benefit and it won’t solve any other issues magiclly, so I think you have the wrong expectation here.

Also, you should remember that Andy’s stuff is all disconnected (think a dumb system with no comms like your old Daly).
So while intresting it is a bit behind what we are doing here with smart connected BMS.
Any unbalanced system (smart or dumb) will have to work hard and for a long time to balance a system. We are all agreeing on that and it should be the first thing any new battery builder does.

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I’m sure you have all seen this - wondering if you agree with Will that active is overblown.

I think active often costs more than it is worth. But what I like about active is you don’t need current to flow for the balancer to work. You just need to hold the voltage at a point where a high cell manifests… and wait :wink:

I agree with Will … as of today.

I may change my mind when I see active balancers doing the job faster and better than me dropping the DVCC charge amps and using “The Bulb”.

The speed at which cells can “lose it”, can be in seconds. And at that point, 5amps does abso-bloody-lutely nothing.

YES, I do understand I’m on the fringes here, but there is nothing like learning WTF not to do, AND what TO do, when your cells are out of whack, waiting for new batched matched Grade A cells … thanks to a BMS that could not handle it originally.

If you have a small PV system, or not the perfect sunny days, then getting the most useful power out of your system can validate some extra investment. The JKBMS as an active balancer is priced very similar to JBD BMS systems which make it compelling.

But PV is cheap and sun is plentyful in most places, so you could get more bang for the buck elsewhere. And I think that is where you need to be smart with were you spend on your system. A balancer is not used that much when you compare how much an extra PV panel will be used (talking of minutes in a day), so the milliamps you win with an active balancer can easily be recouped with extra PV for the same or cheaper cost.

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Granted, a passive balancer technically can do the same. If you hold the voltage at some point where a high cell starts to manifest, and wait… the bleeding/bypass resistors are alternately firing, and that tiny bit of energy bled off does cause the voltage to drop a little bit… which will then cause a little bit of current to flow through the entire pack.

So you get the same effect. It just takes a lot longer (cause the energy is lost into heat, instead of being transferred to a cell that actually needs it). But… that’s where the economic argument comes in. You will do this inefficient process once (when the battery is new) for most people, and maybe once or twice after a deep discharge after that. The rest of the time, you paid for an expensive BMS that is just sitting there.

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I replaced my lightning damaged Narada BMS with a no-comms dumb 15s Daly and ran it like that for a year. I eventually replaced it with the Smart Ant BMS and was horrified to see that the Daly did not do it’s job very well…the highest cell was 3.670V and lowest cell was 2.094V.

It took me about a week to balance the cells using a 12v pc fan and a cheap Chinese Lithium battery charger. Touch wood it has been running well for the past few months as can be seen below.

Please tell me that was a typo and you meant 3.1V ?

Nope, I kid you not, it was 2.094. I still kept the picture.

I was told under 2.5V you are courting almost certain damage. Looks like you got lucky…

Absolutely…I thought that the cell was kaput.

That is shockingly bad.