I'm so glad I found this video before installing my Victron Orion TR 12-12 30 DC-DC charger. I followed your lead and used a 1/4" aluminum plate as a mounting surface for the Orion. In addition, I purchased 1/2" Nylon spacers that I used to hold the aluminum plate off of the HDPE mounting surface to provide additional air flow around the entire setup. It was super easy to wire up and program! The unit does heat up a bit, but the extra heat sink of the aluminum and the offset spacers really help to control the heat. I would not want to mount these directly to wood!! Thanks again for your videos and for showing the best way to mount these DC-DC chargers. Well Done!

Great job just getting after it. Appreciate learning with you.

Fantastic vid. Very calm, thorough and instructive. Thanks. Cheers 🍻

This is a great DIY project! Well done!

Damn engineers.... Even your KZfaq page is sofa king organized! Good videos guys!

Nice work!

Loved the video! We want to build our own lithium batteries very soon! Once we can source everything.

Happy Birthday, Becky!

Just found your channel this evening and have been binge watching. Made it this far. I appreciate all the in-depth information you give in your videos. My only suggestion, and this is just my personal opinion, is less camera movement. It can be a bit hard to watch with all that movement. Keep up the good work!

Couple comments: Like you, I am in the process of planning a lithium battery bank installation. On a boat, I believe that by ABYC standards state that you should have a common ground; which implies that you should not be using the ISOLATED version of the Victron Orion DC-DC converter - the NON ISOLATED version has a common GROUND; the POSITIVE IN and OUT are ISOLATED as you would expect. The use of YELLOW wire, by ABYC standards is for DC GROUND - I see you have added RED heat shrink to the end of the cables( which is laudible), but the yellow wire is not a good plan long term; you will know what it is, but a technician or future owner will not.... I would also suggest as you are installing to get a DYMO GUN and mark what each cable is used for .... Again later on, when you are trouble shooting, you will be glad you took the time. I would also make a wiring diagram and anotate your installation. I did not see a shunt installed on the negative circuit for your starting batteries; it would be good to know what the engines are drawing overtime - you will be able to see starting current and know if something is not performing right. I did not see where you installed the VICTRON Smart Shunt on the Lithium bank?

Corey, Nice job on the Lithium/Solar project. I'm considering a new catamaran. Any suggestions you can think of to have added while they are assembling? (like conduit and pre-running wire across between each engine bay..etc..etc). Keep em' coming..very interesting.

Hi Corey, Another great video. I will gratefully copy the aluminum heat sink when I mount my Victron 12 12/ 30 charger as well. Question is the fabric heat retardant? Cheers Kevin

Would love to see your wiring diagram for this installation as I am doing the same at the moment. André in Sydney

Love the channel guys! How are the Orion’s doing? I’m making the switch to lithium on our Leopard 40 and I think I’m going to use the Orion’s.

May I ask why are you limiting charge current from the alternator of 80 - 85 amps to only 30 amps? (the great advantage of lithium battery in yachts is the fast alternator charging)

The extra heatsink material is smart, so those dc-dc chargers will last longer. You made the right choice for the 30 amp models too. Two things that might help you in the future, gray pvc pipe is for electrical items and white is for water applications. Gray is chemically somewhat different to resist electrical service issues that come up. White will likely work just fine though, gray is schedule 80 and white is schedule 40. Also one thing you don't want to do again is switch your battery selector switch to combine while your engine is running. This can burn out your alternator(s). Just the nanosecond between the electrical contacts changing positions can cause the alternator to go into a state where it has no load and the rectifier diodes will fry. Put a label there telling people to not change those positions while any engine is running. Most boats have them. I am looking forward to your energy usage statistics. If you have a gaming PC though likely you will start eating a god bit of energy. Since you have so much battery capacity you are in pretty good shape for a while of normal operations. A lot of boats have somewhere around 200 ah and do lights, refrigeration, on solar daily of around 300ish watts. 500 watts is better for at least most monohulls. I have a Catalina 30 so my solar is pretty sparse at less than 300 watts. I make up the difference with a igen 2500 generator. It runs our 16000 btu air conditioner just fine and allows us to charge with the leftover juice. We can get 7 or 8 hours of run time for the air conditioner on around a gallon of fuel. Typically that is all we need to cool things off enough to make do otherwise. Generally it will also charge the batteries also on the multiplus with the leftover energy. You may have to set your inverter charger with the appropriate values if you utilize shore power or a generator as to what the appropriate leftover charging capacity happens to be. Frankly you likely don't have enough energy stored to run the boats ac, but a very small generator may be enough running all the time to run ac 24/7 with a Victron Multiplus. Since you are heading southish, AC is a must.. You may use 2-3 gallons of fuel a day(running 24 hours), but at like $180 monthly for extra electricity to run AC. Not an issue for me. The Multiplus can boost start probably two typical AC units on a 2500+ watt (3500 watt)generator. Like a 16000 btu and an 8000 btu. The multiplus adds electricity as needed from the batteries. Solar could make up the slack in between.

Why do you have yellow black and red positive wires? Is that not confusing

Question. What is the purpose of a bus bar?

Can’t figure out why you placed a piece of aluminum behind the heat sinks. All it does is restrict the airflow into the fins of the heat sinks. Would have worked well with just the spacers since it would have allowed more air to circulate. Anyway, just my thought on it. Putting a fan on top of the heat sinks might have been better. 2 cents (CD) into the hat. 👍🙂

Seems to me that charging the lithium batteries while motoring is not an example of capturing otherwise wasted energy from the diesel engines. Charging represents a load on the engines that is indistinguishable from a headwind or counter current and will result in burning more fuel than without the lithium connection.

It could be my speakers but the background music is a little loud in this one. I actually find it better without. It’s nice to hear the sounds of the boat.🛥⚓️