Aeson Power 12V sodium ion without BMS installed?

Has anyone actually run one of these without the integrated BMS active, or bypassed it entirely to use an external unit?

I'm looking at a couple of the 100Ah Aeson sodium ion cells for my cabin setup and I'd ideally want to run them through a Victron Smart BMS so everything talks to the MPPT and MultiPlus properly via the VE.Bus. The Aeson units seem to have their own internal BMS but I can't find clear documentation on whether it can be disabled or overridden.

My concerns:

• Cell balancing — does the internal BMS still handle passive balancing even if you're using an external unit for protection?
• Communication — anyone managed to get these talking to a Cerbo GX at all?
• Temperature cutoffs — sodium ion handles cold better than LFP in theory, which is part of why I'm considering them for an unheated cabin, but I want to verify the BMS isn't cutting out at temperatures it shouldn't

I've seen a few builds on YouTube using Fogstar Drift cells with external BMS setups and that workflow is fairly straightforward, but sodium ion still feels like it's in the "early adopter" territory where documentation is sparse and forum knowledge is worth more than the spec sheets.

Has anyone actually bench tested these, or is the Aeson sodium ion still too niche to have a solid community around it yet? Wondering if I'm better off sticking with a proven LFP option and waiting another year for sodium ion to mature a bit.

@PartnerProject Sodium-ion cells are more tolerant than lithium chemistries, but "more tolerant" isn't the same as "needs no babysitting" — bypassing the integrated BMS without a properly configured external unit watching cell-level voltages is still asking for trouble, especially as Na-ion discharge curves are notoriously flat and you'll get almost no voltage warning before you're on the floor.

If you're going external, a Victron Lynx Smart BMS or a dedicated PACE BMS configured for the correct voltage window (typically 1.5V min, 4.0V max per cell on current Na-ion) would be the sensible route — but check Aeson's own spec sheet obsessively, because "sodium-ion" still isn't one uniform chemistry.

What's your inverter setup at the cabin? That'll affect which BMS comms protocol you actually need.

@PartnerProject I'd not risk it on a cabin setup — but I'm genuinely curious whether the tolerance thing actually holds up in practice with sodium-ion, or if it's just marketing fluff.

On my narrowboat I run a Victron SmartShunt alongside the integrated BMS on my Fogstar cells, basically just so I can see exactly what's happening. Belt and braces, because getting stranded mid-canal with a dead battery bank is nobody's idea of a weekend away.

What's your reasoning for wanting to bypass it — cost saving, or is the integrated BMS causing you specific grief? Because there might be a middle ground where you keep the onboard protection but add an external unit for monitoring rather than control. Curious what @OldSailor thinks given the cells themselves are apparently more forgiving chemically.

Has anyone actually tested what the low-voltage cutoff looks like on the Aeson integrated BMS compared to something like a Victron BMS or a Fogstar-compatible external unit?

I'm wondering whether the built-in protection is conservative enough to leave performance on the table, or whether bypassing it would genuinely give you meaningful extra usable capacity on those cells?

@PartnerProject what's your inverter setup at the cabin — is there a specific reason you'd want external BMS control rather than just letting the integrated one do its thing? Trying to understand whether this is about compatibility with existing kit or actual performance gains.

@Cleggy ran the Aeson integrated BMS alongside a Victron SmartShunt last winter at the cabin — the cutoff kicked in a good 0.2V higher than my Fogstar-paired setup does, which was either reassuring or deeply annoying depending on how you feel about losing capacity in February.

@PartnerProject the integrated BMS on those Aeson cells is genuinely quite conservative — I've seen it cut at around 2.8V/cell when the chemistry can technically tolerate lower. If you're dead-set on external BMS, the Daly Smart or JK BMS units can be configured for sodium ion voltage ranges, but you'll need to manually dial in the parameters since most profiles ship preset for LFP.

Biggest concern for a cabin setup is temperature — sodium ion handles low temps better than lithium, which is part of the appeal, but your external BMS needs to actually know that and not apply LFP-style charge inhibits unnecessarily.

What's your charge source? If you're running Victron MPPT, the custom battery preset on the newer firmware makes external BMS integration considerably more straightforward than it used to be.