So the MPPT cable i thought i could use to shut off the CL 12/100, looks to work the other way. The BMS is able to shut off the mppt.

Since i don't use the Cerbo Generator feature, i can use it to shut off the CL 12/100. Using the Gen feature, i can control it based on state of charge, which is supplied from my batteries. Should allow me to get much closer to full charge off the CL 12/100 alone.

Much cheaper than the non-inverter victrion cable too.

 

Nice work! When you purchase the 125A fuse, you might want to consider purchasing the Victron version similar to the 100A that comes with it. I was told that the devices are calibrated based on the Victron fuses (not sure who is the OEM manufacturer) so that you would get optimal performance from them. I guess it's based on resistance? Not sure why they don't supply the 125A with the device instead of the 100A.

 

Still making changes in the van but with the 125A fuse with the 100A setting it’s supplying ~85A @ 14.3v or 1,200w. No fan, plus its small enough i moved it to my power cabinet and freed up under the passenger seat. It also shortened my wire run by 8ft.

The cerbo generator settings work well at shutting off the CL 12/100.

My triple Orion setup supplied ~950w with high cfm fans. So for the price of one Orion 12-12/30 Dc-Dc, im getting what would take four of the Orion’s.

Still looking to add either the Orion XS 12/12-50a or the kmt1250. Comes down to DVCC support vs 500w folding solar when parked.

 

6 month update.

The setup has worked well, with the CL 12/100 setup as a "Generator" in cerbo gx. When my batteries get to 98% it shuts off the CL 12/100.

How ever i have ran into a new issue with the new v1.08 firmware. It seems to have added a throttling when it reads my house batteries above 13.3v. @NealCarney Have you upgraded your dual setup?

What i'm seeing on the current charge output now:
12v-13.3v - 100%
13.4v - 13.6v - 80%
Above 13.6v - 60%

The van is putting out a constant 14.2v-14.3v, and i tired raising the limit on the CL 12/100 all the way to 15v but no change in output. I submitted a ticket to victron to see if i can downgrade the firmware, but not holding my breath.

 

6 month update.

The setup has worked well, with the CL 12/100 setup as a "Generator" in cerbo gx. When my batteries get to 98% it shuts off the CL 12/100.

How ever i have ran into a new issue with the new v1.08 firmware. It seems to have added a throttling when it reads my house batteries above 13.3v. @NealCarney Have you upgraded your dual setup?

What i'm seeing on the current charge output now:
12v-13.3v - 100%
13.4v - 13.6v - 80%
Above 13.6v - 60%

The van is putting out a constant 14.2v-14.3v, and i tired raising the limit on the CL 12/100 all the way to 15v but no change in output. I submitted a ticket to victron to see if i can downgrade the firmware, but not holding my breath.

Sorry, but I have not used mine since early February and I currently have it disconnected. However from the changelog notes I'm pretty sure I updated to 1.08 and did not have similar issue. FYI, if you set up an account on Victron Professional you can download old firmware; see screenshot below. Double-checking...you added a 56k resistor to each of the wires in the cable, right? Guidance is here. Also check out this post about the importance of have a good clean connection.

 

@NealCarney Thanks for the link, i didn't have a pro account before, sadly going back to v1.06 didn't have an affect.

My CL 12/100 seems to have a little more voltage drift now, its up to 0.3v higher when charging on the house side, and its seeing up to 0.3v lower on the starter battery side. I moved my CL12 ground from the bus bar to a battery terminal and that dropped the house difference down to 0.1v.

I think my next step is to upgrade/relocate my chassis ground, closer to the starter grounding point.

I've used it at least 3 days a week, for an hour each time, so i guess i should expect a little degradation.

 

Looking again at your voltage and % metrics, it may indeed parallel my experience. Tough to say since I typically use both CL 12/100 and usually get 100% from one and <50% from the second, at least initially. I don't really pay attention to the % that shows up on each of them; I just look at combined charging in watts that shows on my shunt.

Depending on your batteries, once you get up to 13.4V you could be at 95% or even 99% SOC. At 13.6V I think you're pretty much right at 99-100%, at least for my batteries (Victron). The charge current definitely drops off once you get up in the high nineties, which I think is natural.

Aside from the batteries' willingness to accept a charge, the CL 12/100 is obviously throttling things based on your setting and the fuse installed. I'm not 100% sure how it works, but I think it's measuring the voltage drop/resistance across the fuse. So I think everything you can do to minimize resistance (really tight/clean/good connections) and keep the wire and connection temperatures low will work to your advantage. Who knows, you may be getting slightly less charge now than before simply because the ambient temperature is warmer.

I typically use both chargers together, so I can't give you good parallel info. But I will say that when I first start charging it will be at absolute max output (I never reach 100% x2, maybe 1800W max), and then it will slowly back off a little bit, presumably because things have heated up a little bit and there is a little more resistance. Interesting enough, if I turn on a big load while charging, I will get more out of CL 12/100, but I'm guessing that is because Ford PCM is sensing more demand and putting out more with the alternator(s).

 

I'm not traveling as much right now, so i'm using the newish renewable/grid config from victron on the multiplus. I've got it set to only charge up to 13.3v from grid. So i always get power from driving/solar. If i have a slow enough drain its gotten down to 13.3v at 65% soc a few times, its usually 70-80% at 13.3v.

When i start the van, and the CL12 starts charging, the battery voltage on the CL12 jumps up ~0.2v which is putting it to 13.5v and it starts throttling. If i turn on a heavy load(enough to drop to 13.2v or more) on my house batteries, my CL12 will jump to 100% instantly as well. Another thing i have noticed, if i turn off my mppt, it will increase the charge current output 2-3%.

When i put my wire info into omni calc, and its telling me i should be seeing 0.01v drop at most, and the CL12 is seeing 0.3v drop, which is why i'm planning to move my chassis ground to the one between the front seats (#25 in BEMM) I've also thought about making the CL12 ground wire 5ft of 24awg, which should drop the house battery voltage reading ~2.5v. If nothing else i'll considering getting the Victron brand 125A fuse.

On your setup I wonder if you swapped yours out with 100A fuses and set the 90A limit if you would get more output.

 

Just finished swapping out my chassis ground.

Went from ~4ft 1/0 cca to frame under the van, to ~6ft copper to ground between the front seats.

10 minutes apart with the mppt off, it gained an 8% charge rate. Nice little bump, with the battery at 95% and 13.4v.

Going to test a 15ft 18awg on the cl12 ground next.

Good isn’t ever good enough for me. 🤣

 

Nicely done! An 8% increase is huge!

 

Did a quick test with some 22awg wire, pulled the fuse out of the ground and jumpered it with a 20ft and 80ft length.

while charging off the van
House at 73%/13.27v
20ft 0.02v drop
80ft 0.05v drop

So not worth it, going to try a 5w 0.5ohm resistor tomorrow.

 

Picked up two 15ohm 25w resistors, to test on the CL12 ground. Battery is at 96% / 13.32v

Charging Normal:
Battery- 13.51v
Starter- 13.81v
Shunt- 13.42v @ 35.42a - 475w

15ohm on ground
Battery- 13.26v
Starter- 13.56v
Shunt- 13.42v @ 37.61a - 505w
6% increase

30ohm on ground (dual 15 in series)
Battery- 13.01v
Starter- 13.34v
Shunt- 13.42v @ 50.41a - 677w
42% increase

From that small sample, each 15Ohm on the ground is dropping the voltage by 0.25v, on both sides.

I’m going to order a single 30ohm 25w resistor and try it with a lower charge on my house batteries. I’ll lower the charge voltage by 0.5v to be safe, but the generator shut off should turn it off before it hits voltage.

Maybe with the resistor i can get more than 85amps at 100% output. 🤞

 

Decided to test out moving the CL12 ground from the house batteries to the starter battery.

It raised both voltages by 0.10v. I expected the starter to increase but expected the house to drop. But it did increase the charge current by ~4%

Just ordered the victron brand 125a mega fuse to test out next

 

Snow day in Denver so i got some more testing in.
Item’s tested:

Victron 125a fuse
8ft 2awg tinned copper
30ohm 25w resistor
Ground to starter battery

At start of the test i was 75% soc and 13.3v

Base line charge off motor
76% current/61a

Vic fuse
(12% improvement)
88% current/72a

Vic fuse + 8ft 2 awg
(2% loss, but voltage didn’t change)
86% current/68a

Vic fuse + 30ohm
Voltage to low on starter

Vic Fuse + ground to starter batt
68% current/54a

Vic Fuse + 30ohm + ground to starter
(Output was not consistent, took a while to jump to 100% with load)
77% current/58a

ended up with just the new fuse swapped out. I’m also seeing it pull 90amps when at 100% current, which is 5amps more than previous best.

I think this is as good as its going to get. With the new ground and fuse overall it charges ~15% more at higher soc, and ~65w more at 100%. I wish i could lower the house battery voltage by 0.25v but firmware is my only guess at this point.

 

I’m testing moving the ground on my starter batteries. To in primary out secondary instead of fords in primary out primary.

It bumped my charge voltage to 14.7v (from 14.2v) which is inline with what it should ne for single battery single sensor. Now my CL12 isn’t throttling even with my mppt and grid on. (Limited to 10a from grid)

My forscan had my battery listed as single with one sensor and 80% SoC. A couple post clam switching it to dual batteries in forscan will change the charge output slightly lower.

 

Still trying to get those last 10 amps, so i tired two different fuses:

150a mega - 66a out
120a 295pal - 56a out

I did find one post on the victron forums that was have a similar lower amp output and he wire brushed the connections with alcohol, which is next test.

 

Got the wire brush and cleaned all the fuses and terminals. Also relocated the CL12 closer to CCP. So its ~3ft to my bus bar and ccp2.

Hit 96A when it started and leveled of at 92a/1.25kw. Previous best was 90a at start and leveled off at 85a/1.15kw. Nice 100w gain

This thing is sure one sensitive current regulator.

Found out Rich Solar is now rebranding SRNE electronics, so i ordered the RS-MPPT50DC. I was going to get the kisae dmt1250 until i found the Rich Solar.

RS-MPPT50DC
50amp/700w charger
55v/45A mppt (800w of panels recommended) (dmt1250 is 200w/5volts/15amps less)
Reverse charger (dmt1250 doesn't have)
Bluetooth + SRNE app (has demo mode like victron) (dmt1250 doesn't have either)
Aux battery voltage sensor. (dmt1250 doesn't have)

All for $200

the Orion XS would have been nice with cerbo support, but almost double the price and just a dc-dc.

 

Very nice. When I quickly tried cleaning my fuse with alcohol it did not make a noticeable difference. Your experience encourages me to give another more thorough try. Although I was mainly looking to get my second CL to provide more than 50A, so I was looking for a huge jump. Looking forward to see how your CL pairs with your new charger. If you can continue to get 90+ from the CL and close to 50 from the new unit you are golden. Even though I planned to get 200A from my combined units, I don't think I'd want to run that much through the Ford cabling on a sustained basis.

 

@NealCarney thanks for that info. Also I swapped the CL12 Ground fuse from a 1a to 0.5a and picked up 2 more amps. Seeing 97a on start, and levels out at 92a.

I was able to find a 110C temp chart for both copper/alum. I whited out the Free Air numbers since those don't apply

The wires off the alternators are rated for ~ 75% output. When i get the 50a DC-DC I'll throw the clamp meter on the cables from the motor since i have to pull the middle cover anyway. It will be interesting to see where the current is coming from and I'll test the 1 awg on the battery. At least they didn't weld the battery 1awg cable like the fuses next to it. I have spare 105c 1/0 that i might order a battery terminal end and upgrade mine, if its pulling the 150a through it.

 

@NealCarney thanks for that info. Also I swapped the CL12 Ground fuse from a 1a to 0.5a and picked up 2 more amps. Seeing 97a on start, and levels out at 92a.

I was able to find a 110C temp chart for both copper/alum. I whited out the Free Air numbers since those don't apply

The wires off the alternators are rated for ~ 75% output. When i get the 50a DC-DC I'll throw the clamp meter on the cables from the motor since i have to pull the middle cover anyway. It will be interesting to see where the current is coming from and I'll test the 1 awg on the battery. At least they didn't weld the battery 1awg cable like the fuses next to it. I have spare 105c 1/0 that i might order a battery terminal end and upgrade mine, if its pulling the 150a through it.

I installed a cheap hall effect meter on the secondary alternator cable in the battery box so that I could observe when it was kicking in. See this post. It takes pretty heavy loads at idle to start. I stopped looking at it because it was rarely active. Probably a good idea to install one on both cables to see how much current each 1/0 wire is carrying. I think the wires need to be derated both due to bundling and the engine compartment heat, although the bundled segment may not be very long.

If you're connected to CCP2 and only charging on engine run, it doesn't seem like you would be affected by the size of the battery cable. Wouldn't the current pathway go from the alternator cable -> 500A fuse -> Ford bus bar -> Ford relay -> 175A fuse -> copper bar to CCP2 (you can see it really well in your picture)?

I do have one of my chargers connected to the battery cable, with the other one on CCP2. Each one only draws 100A max so I'm ok. But not a bad idea to upsize the battery cable.

I don't believe I have a ground fuse on my CL12. Did it come with your unit or is that something you added?

EDIT: added hall effect pic below

 

I did see in your other thread you added the sensor. I’ll test out if the forscan settings have any effect too. (Single/dual one sensor) Maybe dual batteries acts differently?

I figured ill test shutting off the motor a couple of times to see it on the start To stimulate start/stop.
You have to add the fuse, and the CL manual list it as a .3ma fuse for basic operations. Upto a 1.5a when using alarm and shut off features. Its shown in the diagram in the manual as well.

 

I popped the center plastic cover and threw the clamp meter on the 4 wires (3 red/1 black) plus my bus ground.

Van is up to temp, House Battery at 80%/2kw free. Motor is showing 14.72v on my ultragauge.

	5 Minutes	10 Minutes	10 Minutes + Max AC	15 Minutes - CL12 Off
Driver Side Red- Starter/Primary	150A right after start, and leveled off at 120A	110A	130A	20A
Middle Red - Engine	20A	10A	46A	10A
Passenger Side Red - Secondary	0A	0A	8A	0A
Battery Ground to Engine	0A	1A	0A	1A
Rear Battery Bus Bar Ground	Started at 97A and leveled off at 89A	89A	89A	0A

These were taken while parked so i'm sure the motor draw would increase while driving.

I'll run this test again when i connect the 50A charger tomorrow, and i'll get the battery 1 awg cable readings as well.

The AC on max looks to pull 35A/500w on startup, and the second alternator started helping above a 120a draw. Which might be the reason for the 120a continuous output limit on the BEMM chart. (Which is just below 50% duty cycle for it) Does that chart say its for single or dual alternators?

The Primary 1/0 was warm to the touch by the end.

 

Nice test. It does seem like the second alternator kicks in somewhere around 125A at idle. I think when you are under way, it takes a lot more load or heat for the second one to kick in. I think I'd prefer if it just automatically kicked in the second once the first gets to 100-125A so that the current is spread more evenly between the two alternators and those 1/0 wires don't get as warm.

Good luck getting the 50A setup tomorrow; very exciting.

 

Got the Rich Solar (SRNE rebrand) MPPT50DC today. Its smaller than my Victron 150/60 MPPT.

Because it has reverse charging i couldn’t connect it to ccp2 with the CL12. I figure 99% of the time I won’t use that feature since i have trickle charging from my multiplus but wanted it wired just in case. So I connected it to the power board with the battery jumper, so I don’t put a load on that wire for no reason.

The Dc-Dc app works well, wish it had a shut off in it(has a jumper on it you can pull), and it resets settings after firmware updates. I did have to do user defined settings since it locks Boost(absorption) with the LifePo4 settings.

During all my testing it put out a constant ~680w and took in 730w (50w loss). It didn’t care what the starter voltage was.

The CL12 ran 100% with the DC on, it did throttle down a little bit to ~86a. So im getting a healthy 1.8kw/135a to my battery bank.

Cost for both with wiring/fuses is ~$525.
CL12 + 125a 58v fuse - $200
DcDc + 2 breakers - $225
Wire/connectors - ~$100

Power off the van	AC off 14.3v off motor	Max AC - 14.1v off motor
Primary/Starter	132	125
Secondary	27	47
Engine	-11	-52
Starter Hot	1	1
Starter Ground	1	1
Shunt	129	119 (CL12 dropped to 90%)

It looks like it tries to limit the primary to 125A.

 

Nice job. For whatever reason, my units seem to like charging at combined 135A as well. I like the way you wired the cable on top of the battery jumper; I may do that next time I pull the seat.

 

The Mppt50Dc pulls ~2w when not running, and bluetooth stays on. One thing I figured out is even though it tells you to wire it isolated, it’s really a non-isolated charger.

I have an email in to their tech support about the ground. It does work with either alt/bat ground, but want to be sure. Or which ground is preferred.

With both grounds connected, i see ~38a off the 50a charger and the rest off my bus ground. When just the CL12 is running ~15a are going through the 50a charger ground.

After i used the battery lug for the 50a i also moved my trickle and shunt aux connection to the ccp2 relay bolt.

31 mile/45min drive this morning raised my SoC from 71 to 86%, which is about 1.5kw. My mppt was about 300w of it.

 

Van is still in the shop, waiting on the another rear view camera, the first one didn't work. (guessing its because my IPM-B is bad)

On the battery issue, they said they were checking a battery module, but thats all they said.

I've been going threw the BEMM just in case i have issues with the dealer, and figured out that the 120a continuous current limit/time chart is for vans with FPBG (battery guard) But it was a special option, that you can't get with dual alternators, 150w or 400w inverters and removes both CCPs since it give you a different connection point on the manual parking brake. So in my 22 model BEMM pages 98-105 are throw away pages for FPBG. The FPBG wiring diagram on page 98 doesn't show the CCP connections or relay either.

On page 89 it has the wiring diagram for "Third Party Battery Install" which the CCP2 relay is wired differently, and best of all the Aux battery is wired correctly in parallel directly to the Fuse box. It also says for loads between 175a and 240a to wire to the second battery, as do multiple other diagrams. (L is the fuse connection to third party batteries.) Anything labeled "Converter" is their word for up-fitter or in our case DIYer.

So my take from digging through this all again, is with dual batteries/alternators we are good for loads upto 240a, and to connect the load directly to the 2nd battery terminal. So a sterling 1212200 should work off the second battery, not that i would want to pull that much power through the 1 awg battery wire.

 

Van is still in the shop, waiting on the another rear view camera, the first one didn't work. (guessing it because my IPM-B is bad)

On the battery issue, they said they were checking a battery module, but thats all they said.

I've been going threw the BEMM just in case i have issues with the dealer, and figured out that the 120a continuous current limit/time chart is for vans with FPBG (battery guard) But it was a speical option, that you can't get with dual alternators, 150w or 400w inverters and removes both CCPs since it give you a different connection point on the manual parking brake. So in my 22 model BEMM pages 98-105 are throw away pages for FPBG. The FPBG wiring diagram on page 98 doesn't show the CCP connections or relay either.

View attachment 207876

On page 89 it has the wiring diagram for "Third Party Battery Install" which the CCP2 relay is wired differently, and best of all the Aux battery is wired correctly in parallel directly to the Fuse box. It also says for loads between 175a and 240a to wire to the second battery, as do multiple other diagrams. (L is the fuse connection to third party batteries.) Anything labeled "Converter" is their word for up-fitter or in our case DIYer.

View attachment 207877
View attachment 207878

So my take from digging through this all again, is with dual batteries/alternators we are good for loads upto 240a, and to connect the load directly to the 2nd battery terminal. So a sterling 1212200 should work off the second battery, not that i would want to pull that much power through the 1 awg battery wire.

Agree on all points. I was going to mention that your previous chart was from FPBG section, but didn't want to go down that rabbit hole since BEMM is so confusing. Theoretically connecting 200A to the stud on the battery terminal should be ok, since 1 AWG 105C is rated for 245A according to Blue Sea, and it's a short run. I connected one of my cables to the battery and the problem I ran into was that the 1/0 lug was slightly too wide in relation small amount of space available on the connector. In the first picture below, you've got to attach your lug to the #4 stud, which you can see is pretty tight. I think I ended up needing to chamfer one or both of the bottom edges of the lug 45° to get it to fit. I can't find picture of everything connected, but second pic shows the basic layout. While this was the Ford-recommended way to connect, I think you're better off figuring a way to connect directly to the Ford bus bar, probably on top of the battery cable like you did.

 

I found another wire calculator that goes to 105c and has the engine compartment reduction. Which i like to enable to give more buffer. If you lower the voltage drop to 2% @ 250a it bumps it up to 1/0 at 1ft, or 2/0 for engine compartment.

ABYC Wire Size Calculator

boathowto.com

With as warm as the 1/0 from the motor is getting at 130a after 15 minutes, id upgrade the starter wire if I connected directly to the battery. I’m sure at some point im going to get the itch to upgrade the primary wire from the motor too. 2/0 would be at 50% capacity at 130a