After a lengthy process and a few hiccups we have changed the house bank batteries on our boat to Lithium Batteries. (2 x 12V 330Ah Victron Lithium in parallel) with alternator charging through an Arco Zeus smart regulator and various Victron components for management of shore power and small solar panel. My previous Ah capacity was 464 Ah Deep cycle LA limited at 50% discharge to 232 Ah effective.
With the increase in battery capacity I'm wondering how we can maximize our charging capacity. When away from shore, am able to charge with 2000W generator through shore power inlet.
The auxilary motor runs two alternators, one for the house bank and one for the starter battery.
Here's a suggestion from someone on another forum which I hope someone more knowledgeable than myself I'm hoping will comment on:
"What's the problem with 2 alternator on one engine, parallel them on the charge busbar of the lifepo4 and charge in parallel till 3.4V cell volatge and cut them via their sense and/or ignition or field wire with BMS."
That could well boost my alternator charging capacity to somewhere over 110 to 140 Amps. Currently we've set the house alternator limit to 70 Amps and the temperature limit to 80 degrees C.
Thoughts as to how this might be achieved safely, economically? Image below is current setup.
Lithium Changeover With Arco Zeus.
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Rick OGM Support Staff
That may not be bad advice. The Zeus was designed to support a dual alternator setup and as long as you have matching alternators, you should be able to get some good output from this configuration. By driving both alts together, they are treated as one large unit and will not fight each other.
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