Low performance if SmartSolar MPPT 250/100

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szdan asked May 5, '24

Low performance if SmartSolar MPPT 250/100

Hi fellow Victron enthusiasts.

I wonder if anyone can give me some more ideas of what is going wrong with this install where a 250/100 rev2 is underpeforming:

A bit of history to this install where it seemed everything that can go wrong did go wrong. The setup is like this:
Three-phased simple sistem with:

3 x MultiPlus II 3000VA
Cerbo GX
1 x Pytes 5.12kw LIFEPO4 Battery - E-BOX-48100R

1 x SmartSolar Charger MPPT 250/60 rev2
1 x SmartSolar MPPT VE.Can 250/100 rev2

1 x EV Charging Station 32A

Here is also a picture of the setup:

The solar panel layout is as such:

Solat panel model: Trina Solar 440W - VoC: 52.2 / Isc: 10.67

For context I will fill you in with events that had happened up to this point:

1. We went through three EV charging stations. One we sent back as LED were not lighting up. Dealer had no idea what is going on. Second one shipped LED display was frozen. Third one we got was again with LEDs not working. Turned out thanks to Lucian from Victron Staff here it was a software bug. Eventually now it is working. We still have an issue where EV charger is dubbling up the AC Load figures. This was also confirmed by Victron Staff it will be resolved in upcoming VRM release.
2. The 250/100 original MPPT after a few days just died. Very important information now for upcoming topic: With this MPPT the same string performed well 5kw+ outputs. This had to be of course replaced with a similar 250/100 which for the last two months works but with limited output.

250/100 stats as of today:

250/60 stats as of today:

As you can see yesterday the solar charge throughput is same on both 250s roughly:

Wonder if anyone here can give me some ideas of where to go next.

Greetings from Romania!
Dan

MPPT SmartSolar

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Modifications Space

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Answer 1 · 2024-05-05T09:06:37Z

Matthias Lange - DE answered · May 05 at 09:06 AM

Only one Pytes is a bit less for your System.
The E-BOX-48100R only has 50A as charge/discharge limit so I guess the battery is the limiting factor here.

You should have at last one more, better two.

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szdan commented · May 05 at 02:08 PM

Thanks for response Matthias. Help me understand a bit better. When for example the EV is connected or a large consumer is active why isn't it then able to produce to full capability or is it that even if there is large loads connected, which in theory the solar chargers could service as enough sun is available, they will be limited by charge current of battery? Does it not bypass the battery in these instances and consume directly the charge?

Also we disconnected the second smaller charger, and it was still not producing more than 2700W. Which wouldn't be explained by the above.

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snoobler szdan commented · May 07 at 05:42 AM

I would be very curious to see your DVCC settings.

I would also be curious to see your BMS charge and discharge limits:

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szdan snoobler commented · May 08 at 05:38 PM

Hi @snoobler . Thanks for pitching in on this. Here are the settings:

This particular model of battery is limited to 50A charge limit.

DVCC settings:

Thanks again! Any advice welcome.

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Answer 2 · 2024-05-07T03:08:26Z

Guy Stewart (Victron Community Manager) answered · May 07 at 03:08 AM

Hi @szdan,

I think I can see what the issue is here. I won't give too many more details until I am confirmed correct and we have a plan on how we can fix it.

There is nothing wrong with your MPPTs hardware, they are following the instructions of the system as expected. I think the issue is how the system in interpreting the instructions coming from the BMS when the battery is full.

I have escalated it to Victron R&D and may require some action from the BMS manufacturer. So I can't give any indication on time frames, please bump this back in a weeks time if you haven't heard any updates.

Apologies for the reduced performance for now, I am confident it will be able to be resolved via a firmware update.

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szdan commented · May 08 at 05:42 PM

Hi @Guy Stewart (Victron Community Manager).

Thanks for the info and thanks for trying to help. Awesome feeling to have the guy you learned so much from on the Victron academy actually answer to your post!

Would this still be true when the battery is not fully charged yet? Because we can't see it go past 2.5 on that MPPT even when battery is empty.

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Guy Stewart (Victron Community Manager) ♦♦ szdan commented · yesterday

Hi @szdan,

Sorry to keep you waiting on a reply to this, I was doing some work behind the scenes with Pytes on the 'known' issue, before investigating further.

Please connect to both of your MPPTs with VictronConnect and take a screenshot of this screen -

The info I am specifically looking for is the Max Charge Current. Be aware if this is limited for some reason (to 50A) as it might be due to a limitation with the physical wiring or circuit protection by the installer. So if it IS set to something other than the maximum for each unit, please leave it for now. We just want to identify the cause.

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