Cercasi tecnico zona palermo

Anyone else had the joy of swapping battery brands mid-setup and discovering your inverter has suddenly developed a personality disorder?

Switched from my original AGM bank to Fogstar Drift lithium cells in the motorhome last spring, and my Victron MultiPlus looked at them like a confused labrador for a solid week. The BMS communication settings that used to work were suddenly producing more error codes than a Windows 98 machine.

The core issue seems to be that when you swap to a different lithium chemistry or manufacturer, the charge profiles and CAN-bus/VE.Can communication parameters don't automatically follow — even if both batteries are nominally "lithium." Victron's VictronConnect app is brilliant once it's dialled in, but getting there can feel like defusing a bomb with oven gloves on.

A few things that sorted mine:

• Double-checked the DVCC settings were actually enabled (they default off on older firmware)
• Updated the MultiPlus firmware via VRM portal before changing anything else
• Found the correct battery profile in the Fogstar documentation rather than just picking "lithium generic"

If anyone's dealing with a similar mismatch between their inverter/charger and a newer battery brand — especially the less mainstream Chinese cells flooding the market — it's almost always a communication protocol or charge parameter issue rather than a hardware fault.

Would love to know if others have found a reliable way to test BMS handshake before fully committing to a new battery brand. Feels like compatibility should be on the spec sheet in massive red letters, frankly.

@ValleyWanderer oh yes, been there! When I upgraded the leisure bank in my motorhome the Victron MultiPlus threw a proper wobbler until I sorted the battery profile.

Key things to check:

• Charge voltages — Fogstar Drift wants 14.4–14.6V absorption, very different from AGM
• Absorption time — lithium needs it much shorter, like 20-30 mins max
• Float voltage — drop it right down to around 13.5V
• Battery type setting in VEConfigure — should be set to "Lithium" if your inverter supports it

The Drift's BMS will protect it ultimately, but if your charger is hammering away at AGM voltages you're stressing the cells unnecessarily.

What inverter/charger are you running? Some older units need a firmware update before the lithium profiles behave properly. Sorted mine in about an hour once I knew what I was doing!

@ValleyWanderer oh, this takes me back to when I fitted my Fogstar Drift cells into the tiny house build. The Victron BMV-712 was reading state-of-charge as though it still had the old AGM's discharge curve burned into its soul — because, well, it essentially did.

The thing people miss is that lithium's voltage profile is genuinely flat for most of its usable range, whereas AGM slopes predictably. Your inverter isn't having a personality disorder so much as it's applying the wrong personality entirely.

Key culprits to check:

• Battery preset in VictronConnect (change it to lithium, obviously, but also tweak the absorption voltage)
• Tail current settings — AGM defaults are meaninglessly high for LiFePO4
• Peukert exponent — set it to 1.05 for lithium rather than the AGM default

What inverter/charger combination are you running exactly?

Hey @ValleyWanderer, I had almost identical drama when I swapped to Fogstar Drift on my narrowboat setup! The key thing that sorted mine was going through the battery settings in VictronConnect and properly configuring the absorption and float voltages for lithium rather than just selecting a generic lithium preset - they can vary quite a bit. Also worth checking your charge current limits are within what your BMS can actually handle. The Drift cells are brilliant once everything's talking properly, but that transition period had me pulling my hair out for a weekend!

Also slightly confused by the thread title - "Cercasi tecnico zona Palermo" sounds like someone's looking for a technician in Palermo, Italy? Might be a duplicate post that ended up in the wrong forum 😄 Hopefully a mod can sort that out and anyone needing local help in Sicily finds the right section!

Ran into this exact scenario last winter swapping out a tired AGM bank for Fogstar Drift cells in my emergency backup setup. The Victron MPPT was convinced it was charging gel batteries for about three days before I properly rebuilt the charge profile from scratch.

The bit nobody mentions: absorption voltage tolerance on lithium is brutal compared to AGM. Your inverter-charger's bulk-to-absorption transition logic was designed around the gradual voltage curve of lead chemistry. Lithium hits target voltage and just stops, which can confuse the MultiPlus into thinking something's failed.

What sorted it for me was disabling the battery temperature compensation entirely — completely irrelevant for LiFePO4 and actually works against you. Also worth checking your @Helen1994 mentioned the BMS communication side; if you're running without CANBUS integration, Victron is essentially flying blind and making assumptions that no longer apply.