question

Hi @andres Hs1

Yes, this part of VRM is a mess if you call your ac input 'Generator'. It's not treated the same as Grid, and doesn't count as a producer like Solar. The main issue it has is that it isn't counted as battery input, and only direct consumption from it gets registered. So the bar/pie charts become pretty much useless.

I haven't seen the issue where you've highlighted the boxes, but that may be a decimal rounding thing with your small figures. Shouldn't happen though.

I haven't tested what happens when you call it 'Shore', but you can workaround it by calling it 'Grid'. The issue there is that the data you've accumulated under Generator remains as it is and won't get converted to Grid.

This issue has been around for years now, it's annoyed me too. But thanks for bringing it up. I'll try raising it at a higher level to see what can be done..

Hi @andres Hs1,

Good questions and I have had the same myself.

Here is the explanation as I understand it.

In the overview, you are seeing only Consumption, and not battery charging. Solar is also included, but specific AC source is not defined. If for example there was AC supply (either grid or generator) then it would not be visible if it was only used to charge the battery. If there was a load then it would be visible (though concealed under the catch-all 'consumption').

The explanation for this is that discharge from the battery is also counted as consumption. So if you charged the battery with 10 kWh from the generator, and then discharged 10 kWh from the battery to run loads, it would be incorrectly counted as 20 kWh instead of 10 kWh of load consumption.

In the Consumption, It looks to me that you have mis-coloured your boxes, see my drawing using the coloured lines and arrows connecting the colours of the graphs with the data.

I think this makes it a bit clearer - You have the last 7 days selected, so that is the pie graph we are looking at.

There is some small discrepancy in the numbers, usually due to the time/date cutoff point. This is usually negligible but in this system with a VERY small consumption (less than 1 kWh per week), it's becomes more obvious.

Hi @JohnC

thanks for the hint, I will change it to grid and see if that fixes the problem

Hi @Guy Stewart (Victron Community Manager)

wow, I totally missed that! :S, thanks for the explanation and spotting the error

by the way, I am checking right now, the history is missing all the consumption from 1pm. Is there a minimum threshold required for the system to record it? While I am not on the boat, the only device continuously running is the modem, thus, I would expect to see a constant discharge of ~15W

Regards
Andres

To me it's the inconsistency. Solar rightly gets a page as a producer, but Generator only what's directly used. In fact I don't think there's an integrated value for Generator total production anywhere on VRM. I'm offgrid, and the solar and genset hold equal status. The Victron solar of course is reliable. The gensets, along with the cloud, aren't. That's why I keep two. Yet no useful data, not even running time, is available.

I think we could do better than what's there now.