D400 wind generator and Lithium batteries

[sailing_gal]

I have a D400, and it is not compatible immediately with lithiums. The company sells a regulator that is compatible with lithium batteries, but it is kind of pricey. What happens is when the BMS turns off at full battery status, the D400 engages a relay to stop charging that results in overheating of the relay and burns out the regulator. Ask me how I know!

An inexpensive get around is to remove the regulator that is there, and replace with 2X 40 amp relays in parallel that stop charging power when disconnected. Then connect that relay to a programmable voltage regulator (you can get one from China for less than $10). You program that voltage regulator to turn off prior to the BMS shut down voltage.

When the wind is howling, the 80 amp limit is never reached.

Then, when you switch the switch for the D400 to brake, it turns everything off and does not overheat anything.

I have that system now with my D400 for over a year and it is working perfectly.

[Dean2]

Originally Posted by Tikitour

Hi I have a D400 and I am considering replacing AGM batteries with Lithium batteries. What is the consensus is the D400 compatible for charging lithium?
Cheers

I have not gone ahead with the purchase. It does seem possible but there are issues I am not comfortable with.

Basically, your Lithium batteries need to be charged within a strictly defined set of parameters. Your BMS exists to ensure that these parameters are not exceeded - if they are the BMS should have the ability to disconnect the item so as to prevent harm to the batteries. Without sounding too paranoid, you also need to consider the prospect of equipment failure in the system - by this I mean that you don't want to fry several thousand $$ worth of batteries because some piece of poorly made s#@t fails.

I'm not satisfied that the D400 can be installed in a way that satisfies these points.

Another poster suggested the MarineKinex unit. I looked at that in detail and it still does not make me feel confident enough. Their charging voltages do not match my requirements and did not seem to be configurable.

I'm still looking. A wind generator would be really useful I'm sure.

[kryg]

Charging Marine Lithium Battery Banks

It would be nice to know in detail your workaround.
There is a very good article you can download free by a NZ electronic engineer Eric Bretscher from nordkyndesign, is independent of supplying batteries of any kind, a must-read for thoughts thinking of installing lithium batteries.

His article is part of a series dealing with building best-in-class lithium battery systems from bare cells, primarily for marine use, but a lot of this material finds relevance for low-voltage off-grid systems as well.

In my case, I wanted to install lithium battery bank further research I decided to stick to what I know. The problem is not all BMS are created equally, you will need to have a BMS custom designed and build for your boat systems- as you could burn out all your charging assets. I have a D400 wind generator also, solar panels 720 watts a Victron smart solar controller and 120-amp alternator. I did not want to risk it after reading his very comprehensive paper on the subject. So I replaced my batteries once again with 4x 215 amp AGM batteries.

The reason being is once the AGM bank in say around 5 to 10 years fail. By then, the Lithium BMS tech will be fully sorted. Here is the link.
http://nordkyndesign.com/charging-marine-lithium-battery-banks/
Last Updated on 21 February 2021 by Eric Bretscher

Originally Posted by sailing_gal

I have a D400, and it is not compatible immediately with lithiums. The company sells a regulator that is compatible with lithium batteries, but it is kind of pricey. What happens is when the BMS turns off at full battery status, the D400 engages a relay to stop charging that results in overheating of the relay and burns out the regulator. Ask me how I know!

An inexpensive get around is to remove the regulator that is there, and replace with 2X 40 amp relays in parallel that stop charging power when disconnected. Then connect that relay to a programmable voltage regulator (you can get one from China for less than $10). You program that voltage regulator to turn off prior to the BMS shut down voltage.

When the wind is howling, the 80 amp limit is never reached.

Then, when you switch the switch for the D400 to brake, it turns everything off and does not overheat anything.

I have that system now with my D400 for over a year and it is working perfectly.

[Titanic II]

I have a D400 and 460AH Lithium batteries. Had the system installed for a couple of years now without any issues.

D400 has a 6TB 12 regulator. System will not work with the other regulator supplied by the D400 peeps. Make sure the one you get is the 6TB 12.

One charge output to Lithium house bank. One charge output to flooded lead acid starter batteries. House bank often completely charged during the day and cut off from charge sources by battery protection system. At this time any overflow spike goes to the lead acid starter in the fraction of a second before the regulator transfers the load to the dump resistors.

I have kept the 6TB 12 set to max voltage of 14.2 to make the starter batteries a little happier. Means we lose some charge capacity but better safe then sorry.

We haven't destroyed any batteries or burned the boat down yet. Love the D400. Up to 4 people working on laptops over 20 hours / day because of time zones and it keeps us going 90% of the time in conjunction with 1kW solar for the heavy lifting.

[earthbm]

My D400 installation has a heater element in the photo. I assume that when the BMS shuts off the regulator just sends the power to the heater. (With 2 AWG wires - not messing around!)

Wouldn’t it solve the problem?

This thread made me list my D400 for sale, but do I really need to get rid of it?

[Dean2]

You need a regulator in the system to ensure that the voltage hitting the lithium batteries is not too high. The BMS does not do this itself (at least to my knowledge!). Titanic's response suggests the 6TB 12 regulator and this makes perfect sense.

Sadly I dicked around too long and missed out on the D400 I as looking at!

[earthbm]

So I’ve read the article here:

https://eclectic-energy.co.uk/mppt-r...ers-inverters/
Y
If your controller sends the output to the heating element at a lower voltage than the BMS cut off, you’re okay

[CarlF]

As suggested previously, the easy solution is to connect the D400 to an AGM or LA start battery and then use a DC-DC charger to charge the Lithium house bank. This avoids any risk of damaging either the lithium bank or the D400. The DC-DC charger from Victron is a good match with a maximum charge rate of 30 amps.

This way the D400 is unaffected by the lithium bank. Its regulator just thinks it’s charging the start battery.

If the Lithium bank becomes fully charged then the DC-DC charger will go to float and draw little to no current. At that point, the start battery voltage will rise. Once it is also fully charged the D400 regulator will dump additional charge to the resistors.

[Albro359]

We have a D400 24V generator and I would say it's not worth the bother.
We have 600W of solar and a 660Ah AGM house bank, which we will replace with LiFePO4 when they finally give up.
Our D400 just doesn't deliver much power at all unless it's really blowing, and who wants to be in a windy anchorage?
In the last 9 years we've had to replace the regulator, replaced all the bearings, and now it needs main shaft bearings again...not so expensive 30GBP for the kit, but 60GBP to ship it....I don't think it's worth it.
I think I'll take it down and get rid of it - in Opua New Zealand, anybody want it ??

[ahun]

I have an ancient air403, I've put a pwm solar controller* between it and the 400Ah LiFePo battery bank, since the regulator was fried. It works for me.

* as recommended in the manual

[Ryan Northcott]

I've recently installed a D400 with 600Ah LiFePO4.

Current setup uses the recommended Eclectic Energy LVM/6TB12 regulator with both outputs connecected to my single AGM starting battery (Lifeline GPL-3100T) and a Victron Orion-Tr Smart Isolated DC-DC 12/12V 30A (360w) set on LiFePO4 profile to charge both the CHINS 12v 300Ah batteries (parallel).

I have an inline shunt that measures the output of the LVM/6TB12 going into the AGM starting battery.

Not very windy where I'm currently anchored, 10kts of wind with occasional 15kts gusts. Output into the starting battery is on average about 25 watts as per my inline shunt / meter. Have seen it spike to 170 watts during some really good gusts but average is below 30 watts. It's on par with the output graph for the D400 and my cabling exceeds the recommended size for 30' run so voltage loss should only be around 2-3%.

Now for the DC-DC..
I have the cutoff points for the AGM starting battery set at 13.2v to start charging and 12.0v to stop. Now all this sounds great in theory until it starts it's charge cycle. I get about a 4 minute blast of 30a going into the LiFePO4 before the starting battery hits it's stop setpoint, then after a few hours of the D400 slowly charging my brand new Lifeline AGM I get another 3-4 minute blast and the cycle repeats. The DC-DC gets so hot during it's charge cycle you could roast a hotdog over it! So a lot of energy is lost in heat..

My thoughts..
Was it worth the investment, not yet. Perhaps on the water with good wind it will keep the autopilot going or even help charge the batteries while underway. I'm maxed out for solar at 900w (monohull - no arch) and didn't want to start putting panels on the deck or off the rails. I will add an arch down the road and add more solar. Got a great deal on a D400 and mast kit so figured I'd give it a shot.

[Na Mara]

I just worked through this exact problem with silent wind. It was a tricky problem as their standard solutions were inadequate.

1. Have a relay that parallels the AGM engine battery to the LFP house bank when BMS ATC is high and voltage on the AGM side is over 13,5 V, and that disconnects the batteries otherwise.

Problem, once disconnected the controller of the windgen can’t see the voltage of the LFP and so does not know when to start charging again. It waits until the voltage drops on the engine battery before charging. But as the engine battery isn’t being discharged due to it being preserved for starting the engine, the wind gen starts only rarely. Very poor efficiency.

2: Have the wind gen charge the engine battery and then have a dc dc charger charge the LFP bank.

Problem. Slightly better efficiency but the wind gen and dc-dc charger won’t sync with each other so there will be a degree of cogging of either the wind gen, the charger or both depending on wind strength and system parameters. This will be annoying and or inefficient.

Eventually I came up with the best solution. Have a relay that shorts the lines from the wind gen to the controller activated by the BMS ATC. This brakes the wind gen and stops power getting to the controller. It works on both windgens with internal rectifiers (5pin DC relay) and those without (11pin AC relay). Watt and sea use this system on their hydro generators to stop their pod 600 or to protect lithium banks and sell the appropriate relay for AC for 30euro. The principle works just the same for wind generators.

Here’s a link to the Watt and sea system.

https://www.wattandsea.com/wp-conten...Mastervolt.pdf

[bergius]

I did a bit of research on this last winter. We have a 400Ah 12V Victron LiFePO4 setup. A wind generator would complement our FLINsail solar array pretty well, as they have to be taken down when wind exceeds 18kt - a state where a wind generator would start producing something reasonable. A wind generator would also extend our autonomy in the Northern European winter when there’s no sun but plenty of wind.

Outside of buffering through a lead-acid battery, the only wind generator currently on the market that seems it should work is Superwind. Their charge controller is powered by the wind generator instead of the battery, and hence is fine with a BMS controlled relay disconnecting it. You obviously need a dump load as well. If we go this way, we’d likely use the excess power for a hot water heater.

At the moment we don’t have a wind gen as finding a suitable place to mount it on our canoe stern is tricky. Once we update the standing rigging, we might combine the two aft stays into one, and then there would be a spot. Before that, Superwind was reluctant to sell us a unit due to lack of secure mounting options.

[Na Mara]

Shorting the cables upstream of the controller with a BMS controlled relay works on any wind gen, not just the superwind (great generator though that is). It’s a universal solution for ATC control of the wind gen against a lithium bank.