01/12/2026
A 48 ft trawler transiting the Great Loop upgraded to lithium batteries while en route; however, the installer did not consider the entire system. Charging was constrained by the Magnasine inverter/charger. This meant running the generator 6 to 7 hours per day.
The solution: install multiple Victron Multiplus-II inverter chargers, which can replace daily power consumption in just over 2 hours per day. The constraint now to charging the 1,840 A-Hrs of house batteries is physical space for mounting the Victrons (and budget). Bulk charging takes 30% capacity of the Northern Lights 12 kW generator.
Other improvements:
- replaced Balmar Duo charger with Victron Orion XS charger, coupled with SmartBattery Sense on the engine start battery (the Duo had failed)
- installed a Balmar APM-12 alternator protection module, which protects the alternator diodes from electrical spikes when the batteries may shut off
- connected Multiplus units to existing Victron Cerbo GX
- connected Epoch Pro V2 lithium batteries to existing Cerbo GX
- added a second MPPT solar panel controller for the 3 panels, and changed to parallel operation on 2 panels instead of all panels 3 in series (shadow and loose connection risk)
- removed the AIMS Power battery disconnects, which the battery installer represented as “alternator volt regulators.” (These devices would actually shut off the batteries when they were fully charged and the solar panels were in absorption mode.)
