Orion 2 BMS - 36 Cell Battery Management System Kit

The Orion BMS 2 in a 36 cell kit: the battery management system itself plus the current sensor, the cell tap harness, the main I/O harness and the thermistors, so the pack can be wired without hunting for the parts that make the BMS usable.

A lithium pack without management is a pack waiting to fail. Cells drift apart in voltage, one of them hits a limit first, and the whole pack is then governed by its weakest member. The Orion BMS 2 watches every cell individually, balances them, measures pack current through a hall effect sensor, tracks temperature through thermistors, and reports all of it over CAN so the charger, the inverter and the vehicle controller work to the same numbers. It is the second generation of a system used across EV conversions, marine installations and stationary storage, and it is the BMS our own kits are built around.

Key specifications

Features

• Supplied as a working kit rather than a bare controller, so there is nothing missing when it arrives
• Measures every cell individually and balances at up to 200 mA, which is what keeps a pack usable over years rather than months
• Reports over CAN, so the charger and the vehicle controller act on the same pack data instead of guessing
• Rated from minus 40 to plus 80 degrees, and used in marine and stationary storage as well as vehicles
• Choose the current sensor to match your pack, not the other way round: 200 A through to 1000 A, all at the same kit price
• Documented properly, with an operations manual, a wiring and installation manual, a quick start guide and mechanical drawings

Compatibility

Two choices to make when ordering:

• Current sensor, sized to the highest current your pack will see, including peaks under acceleration rather than the continuous figure. The sensor choice does not change the price.
• Cell tap harness length, 6 ft or 12 ft, chosen by how far the BMS sits from the pack. The 12 ft option costs a little more.

This kit covers packs up to 36 cells in series. Larger packs use the 48, 72, 108, 144 or 180 cell versions, and the 24 to 72 cell units all share the same enclosure, so a bay designed for one takes another.

Our CCS fast charging kits require an Orion BMS reporting over CAN, so this is the natural pairing if DC fast charging is in the plan. A CAN adaptor is needed to configure the BMS from a laptop.

In the box

• 1 x Orion BMS 2, 36 cell
• 1 x current sensor in your chosen rating
• 1 x 36 cell tap wiring harness in your chosen length
• 1 x Orion main I/O harness, 6 ft
• 1 x current harness with 8 x 2 m thermistors

The CAN adaptor used to configure the BMS is ordered separately.

Downloads

The Documents tab holds the operations manual, the wiring and installation manual, the quick start guide, the specifications, the mechanical drawing, the enclosure 3D drawings, the migration guide and the release notes.

We also publish our own Orion guides, written from building these systems rather than from the manual. If you are not sure which kit you need, start here:

Open the interactive system builder

It works out which BMS, sensor and harnesses your pack needs, and what the kit comes to.

• Quick start guide, eight steps from box to first power up, with the main I/O pin out
• Wiring and installation, sizing, pin outs and voltage taps
• Operations, theory, limits, failsafes and fault codes