Bobby-gg
LIFE MEMBER
Guys, I was another lucky recipient of the half price offer Ecotree lithium battery deal and, as I'd been preparing my vehicle over the last few year's to make the jump to lithium it couldn't of been timed any better.
As a bit of background, we bought our van in summer 2019 and found out at our first 3 night festival that the leisure battery wasn't performing as expected.
As such, I spent the first lockdown making various improvements, including running 50mm cables directly from the alternator to the battery and then 16mm cables via a new split charge system to the battery bypassing the onboard cbe charger, a victron 30A mains charger to replace the 16A cbe mains charger and a Halfords 100Ah efb battery to replace the original Everexceed st-12135 battery which weighing in at 40kg almost give me a hernia removing!
This worked well enough for our limited trips out during 2020 but the next upgrade to be installed was squeezing in the biggest solar I could on the limited space roof, which I managed to get a victron 175watt panel on, with a victron smartsolar controller.
Then, a raspberry pi was connected to allow remote monitoring of the system when the van has a WiFi connection.
All this worked well, and proved to be acceptable during 2021's festivals and wild camping but was pushing the limits if using off grid too long.
So now that I had the opportunity to upgrade to lithium I was doing my research into a B2B charger to allow full use of the system and initially I was looking at victron gear since everything else is victron, but I changed my mind to try a votronic B2B as victron only do a max 30A and they don't include a temperature monitor for cold temp cut of - I ended up getting a votronic isolated 45A charger.
So, with the forecast looking quite good yesterday I started by removing the drivers seat as I wanted to mount the charger under the seat, I've never seen a vehicle seat so heavy, I really struggled lifting it out, but once out I could see how I could fit the charger.
Two rails were fitted, to hold the charger off the floor slightly as there is a fan mounted under the charger as well as another at the front, main 16mm cables were ran directly from the vehicle battery, correctly fused and sense wiring added to both batteries to allow the charger to function in voltage sensing mode for optimal performance
The leisure battery is located in the bottom of the wardrobe behind the drivers seat, and is rather awkward to remove and replace but once you've got the knack it's relatively easy.
All fitted, connections double, and even triple checked, start the vehicle and getting a nice healthy 14.49 volts at the vehicle battery and over 30A charging the leisure battery.
But, I have made a slight connection mistake in that I've connected the temperature sensor to the positive terminal of the battery rather than the negative, I'll strip the wardrobe out again tonight and swap it over
Time will tell how this system will perform and our next off grid festival isn't until the end of April for fully testing it, but I'm fairly sure that the more capacity, and a better charging ability will be absolutely perfect for us and with the expected increases in energy price's, we should be able to book more non-electric site's in the future
Thanks to the guy's at Ecotree for making this possible and their first class service in making recommendations to meet my requirements
As a bit of background, we bought our van in summer 2019 and found out at our first 3 night festival that the leisure battery wasn't performing as expected.
As such, I spent the first lockdown making various improvements, including running 50mm cables directly from the alternator to the battery and then 16mm cables via a new split charge system to the battery bypassing the onboard cbe charger, a victron 30A mains charger to replace the 16A cbe mains charger and a Halfords 100Ah efb battery to replace the original Everexceed st-12135 battery which weighing in at 40kg almost give me a hernia removing!
This worked well enough for our limited trips out during 2020 but the next upgrade to be installed was squeezing in the biggest solar I could on the limited space roof, which I managed to get a victron 175watt panel on, with a victron smartsolar controller.
Then, a raspberry pi was connected to allow remote monitoring of the system when the van has a WiFi connection.
All this worked well, and proved to be acceptable during 2021's festivals and wild camping but was pushing the limits if using off grid too long.
So now that I had the opportunity to upgrade to lithium I was doing my research into a B2B charger to allow full use of the system and initially I was looking at victron gear since everything else is victron, but I changed my mind to try a votronic B2B as victron only do a max 30A and they don't include a temperature monitor for cold temp cut of - I ended up getting a votronic isolated 45A charger.
So, with the forecast looking quite good yesterday I started by removing the drivers seat as I wanted to mount the charger under the seat, I've never seen a vehicle seat so heavy, I really struggled lifting it out, but once out I could see how I could fit the charger.
Two rails were fitted, to hold the charger off the floor slightly as there is a fan mounted under the charger as well as another at the front, main 16mm cables were ran directly from the vehicle battery, correctly fused and sense wiring added to both batteries to allow the charger to function in voltage sensing mode for optimal performance
The leisure battery is located in the bottom of the wardrobe behind the drivers seat, and is rather awkward to remove and replace but once you've got the knack it's relatively easy.
All fitted, connections double, and even triple checked, start the vehicle and getting a nice healthy 14.49 volts at the vehicle battery and over 30A charging the leisure battery.
But, I have made a slight connection mistake in that I've connected the temperature sensor to the positive terminal of the battery rather than the negative, I'll strip the wardrobe out again tonight and swap it over
Time will tell how this system will perform and our next off grid festival isn't until the end of April for fully testing it, but I'm fairly sure that the more capacity, and a better charging ability will be absolutely perfect for us and with the expected increases in energy price's, we should be able to book more non-electric site's in the future
Thanks to the guy's at Ecotree for making this possible and their first class service in making recommendations to meet my requirements
Last edited:
