I installed 3x 10kVa Victron Quatto's units on an installation, but not 3-phase synced (3 units run independantly on 48V battery banks). Requirement was not 3 phase synced, but rather 3 independant lines run separately. But client wants to be able to monitor all three units. I installed A single Venus GX, as the supplier confimed it can work. Is he correct?
Hello Botessj,
How to connect multiple VE.Bus devices (eg Quattros and Multi's) to a single Venus-device (CCGX or Venus GX) is covered in this section of the CCGX manual. There is some additional benefit here for the VGX.
There are still limitations with the displays of the data:
Connecting multiple VE.Bus systems to a single CCGX
Only one VE.Bus system can be connected to the VE.Bus ports on the back of the CCGX. The professional way to to monitor more systems is to add a second CCGX.
If you do require to connect more than one system to the same CCGX, use an MK3-USB. Functionality will be limited:
Only the system connected to the built-in VE.Bus ports is used to generate the data on the Overview pages.
All connected systems will be visible on the Device-list
All connected systems will be taken into account for Energy consumption and distribution calculations (kWh graphs on VRM)
Only the system connected to the built-in VE.Bus ports is used for the Generator start/stop logic
The CCGX will not send proper data to VRM any more. The Venus GX does send information of both systems to VRM: its therefor better to use a Venus GX for systems like this.
In case of an ESS system, only the system connected to the built-in VE.Bus ports is used in the ESS mechanisms. The other one is displayed in the device list only.
Alternatively the VE.Bus to VE.Can interface (ASS030520105) can be used. Add one for each additional system. Note that we advise against it; this interface is a deprecated product. Make sure that the VE.Can network is terminated and powered. For powering the VE.Can network, see Q17 in our data communication whitepaper.
Well, there’s not one best approach, I’m afraid.
You can buy one Venus GX and two MK3-USBs and you’ll be able to see all three devices in the device list, and VRM will show totalized values that are accurate. But the graphical UI won’t be right, and it’s confusing for an end user to look at.
Or, you can buy three Venus GXes and set them up side by side, but then you have to go to three URLs and you’ll be seeing each system individually. (You could set up a screen with three browsers side by side, maybe.) You can feed all three datasets to VRM, but there they are captured as discrete “sites”, so you have to look at each set separately. (That might be okay, or it might not be, depending on what you want to see.)
The very fanciest solution is to buy three Venus GXes and then add some software to take all the data streaming out of them and combine it into one database, and then put a UI on top of that data that aggregates everything. That’s what I ended up doing, but there’s nothing off the shelf or production-ready that does that today.
