Using other brands of networked Lithium Batteries in Victron Systems

Posted by Peter Kennedy on 5/1/2024 to System Integration

We recently got to play with an Epoch Lithium Battery and were able to network it to an Ekrano GX. Here is an account of how it worked. The battery in question is an Epoch 12 volt 460 Amp Hour battery with an internal BMS but with Victron Communications and we were able to connect it to the BMS Can port of the Ekrano.

The screenshots below come from the Ekrano and in this first image you can see the device list and see that it lists the battery as being B12460A. This experiment was done during one of our training sessions and you will see we were playing around with other devices including a temp sensor and burglar alarm.

When you click on the battery in the list above you get the page below where you can see the upper level menu tree for the battery.

Clicking on the details menu you get to see all about the battery including how many batteries are in the bank (which you must set up separately using dipswitches on the battery itself) as well as maximum and minimum cell voltages.

Clicking on the device menu gets you to the screenshot below where you can see the device is connected via the CAN-bus and it has its product type and ID and firmware version.

And finally in the screenshot below we go to the DVCC page where we can see that our battery is listed as the controlling BMS. DVCC stands for Distributed Voltage and Current Control and when this is enabled it turns the Ekrano GX from a passive monitor into an active controller. You can read more about DVCC in the Ekrano Instruction Manual.

All of the above would have worked just the same with the Cerbo GX and it was all pretty much plug and play. Before we started the battery itself had already been set up with its dipswitches. The battery also has its own Bluetooth. Note that we do not sell Epoch batteries at PKYS and can't answer any detailed questions about them, we just welcomed the opportunity to see how their integration with Victron worked. We do sell Victron Smart Lithium Batteries which, because they use an external BMS, give more opportunities for control and management that these Epoch batteries do.

Victron GX devices can communicate with many types of batteries, not always in as much detail as this integration. The integration is described in the article on Battery Compatibility and the list of batteries tested includes the following list. Click on the links for more details: