I’m hoping someone has a suggestion for me. Prior to purchasing the larger swapsolar bundle on indigogo, I had been using two cheaper 12v fridges when overlanding or weekend camping. In my setup with the two previous fridges, I had purchased a 100ah LifePo4 battery along with a victron charger, a shunt, a fused cigar and usb plug kit. This allowed me to power my fridge(s) for multiple days successfully. When I first started using this setup, I received an E1 low voltage alarm on the first 12v fridge. Fortunately, the fridge had a battery protection setting which allowed you to choose low, med, or high and would shutoff the 12v fridge to ensure that it did not drain my starter battery completely. Putting this setting on low (I think it was a 10v cutoff), allowed me to operate this fridge, and the second fridge, without receiving any errors.
Fast forward to last week when I received my multicooler. When plugging in the cooler to the 100ah Lifepo4 battery using the bluetti cable and the 20a fused cigar plug on my battery box, I receive the E1 error code everytime the compressor kicks on which obviously does not allow the multicooler to cool down. Unfortunately for my circumstance, it does not appear that the multicooler has the same sort of battery protection setting for me to test to see if it allows everything to work.
The multicooler has worked flawlessly with my AC180T batteries and plugged in to 110v AC at my house. I would hate to abandon my 100ah Lifepo4 setup completely, as it wasn’t cheap and has worked wonderfully with my other setups. I am hoping that someone has an idea or recommendation for a modification to my setup to allow me to use my 100ah battery once my AC180T batteries are depleted when on extended adventures.
I appreciate any suggestions. I do love the multicooler and the AC180T and have a third B70 on order. Having the ability to make ice for my bourbon this week at camp has been a game changer for me. lol
I assume that have something to do with the start up power draw from the compressor.
Lifepo4 battery are really stable in voltage. But when a compressor kicks in, especially it doenst have softstart, it can have a really big start up power which can reduce the voltage of the Lifepo4 battery too and trigger this alarm for this short time.
Maybe you can measure the Start up power with an ac plug. cigar plug is also kinda limited in power delievery.
@christopherpesson What is the actual output voltage of the 100Ah battery? Is the fused cigar connected to the battery through a DC-DC circuit (or is it directly connected to the positive and negative terminals of the battery)? Judging from the phenomenon described, the output voltage of the battery/fused cigar is lower than the input range of the refrigerator. If you want to adjust the cut-off voltage of the refrigerator input by yourself, this is currently not possible, and pushing firmware cannot solve it. It is recommended that you buy a DC-DC converter to convert the 100Ah battery output into a cigar plug.
Can you specify which Victron charger you have? a victron Orion-tr smart 12I12 XXX?
Bluetti asked you if the multicooler was connected directly to your LifePo4 battery? or is it connected, with your two other refrigerators, to the Victron charger?
A first suggestion if you have the Victron Orion-tr smart 12I12 XXX, I understand that you can slightly increase the output voltage on this charger (up to 15V…). Do not put 15V directly because that is a lot, you can increase the voltage gradually, in small steps, to see if your fridges no longer make an E1 error, when the multicooler compressor starts up…
Second suggestion, if your multicooler is connected directly to the Victron charger, you can perhaps connect it directly to the LifePo4 battery (be careful not to make a mistake in the polarization so as not to burn your Multicooler) to leave your fridges which seem sensitive to a drop in voltage, on the Victron alone (which must maintain the constant voltage for your two fridges, without having to support the inrush current of the Multicooler causing the drop in voltage ).
-A third suggestion: completely modify your system: put the 2 fridges and the multicooler on the AC180T (I don’t know if the AC180T can run them all) and keep your 12V battery to recharge the AC180T via the input solar if necessary.
Currently at 97% soc, it is outputting 13.3v while not under load. The fused cigar plug is connected directly to the positive/negative terminals of the 100ah Lifepo4 battery using an in-line 20a fuse.
I do not currently have a DC-DC converter in my setup but will consider that purchase if you believe it should solve my issues. Would you recommend a 12v to 24v DC-DC or something more specific than that?
I’m using the Victron Energy Blue Smart IP65 12v 15a charger. This is only used currently to recharge and maintain my 100ah lifepo4 battery when using 110v (like shore power).
Also, just to clarify because I don’t think I was specific enough in my original post, The other two fridges are not hooked up currently in my setup. I purchased the multicooler to replace them both. I passed them down to relatives when I received the multicooler. I only mentioned them to describe how I overcame the E1 errors on both by selecting the “low” setting under the battery protection cutoff which is not possible with the multicooler.
I also tried recharging the AC180T using the same cigar plug hooked to the 100ah and it was also cutting off. I then tried plugging it in to the factory cigar plug on my suburban to see if that was an option and had the same issues with my starter battery.
The more I think about it, Bluetti_Care’s suggestion of using a DC-DC converter to up the voltage does make a lot of sense.
gregmay7 found a good dc dc converter (.victron Orion-tr smart 12I12 XXX) which made it possible to solve the problem of starting a device with a high inrush current and sensitive to a drop in voltage. Watch this post and those below for the datasheet.