question

marc-heide avatar image
marc-heide asked

quattro and multiplus with different input source dvcc pylontech

Dear all,


im struggling with the next questions. i hope you can answer them.


I want to have 3 or 6 quattro's 3 phase 48V.

3 pylontech battery banks.

and 3 multiplus for additional charging the battery's. (because they are almost as expensive as a skylla)


the quattro's will run on the shorepower most of the time. I want to get an additional generator connected to the multiplus only to charge the battery's.

becuase otherwise i will get issue's by using 2 different inputs?


Is this possible to connect the battery's with canbus cables so my max current limiter works on all victron equipement combined. So i do not overcharge the battery's.


is it possible to set the current limiter from the multiplus different from the quattro's?


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Multiplus-IIPylontechquattro 10kva
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7 Answers
marc-heide avatar image
marc-heide answered ·

Or my choise would bg mg li-ion battery's. But i think they work the same on the canbus.

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Alexandra avatar image
Alexandra answered ·

@Marc Heide

What size quattros are you using?

What size bank/bms?

And then what size multiplus?

You may not need it to co ordinate.

And no you cannot have the multiplus and quattros controlled by one GX in DVCC.

There will be other ways to stop them charging before the batteries are full, for example having them only charge during the bulk phase which is 95% of the charge done.

Absorption could be handled by the quattros or solar.

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marc-heide avatar image marc-heide commented ·
Thank you for your answer!


main qauttro or multiplus would be 10 kva

additional multiplus would be 5kw

battery bank would be 4x pylontech us5000 for each 10kva quattro or multiplus.

the main quattro or multiplus would be bussy providing all the power from shore with powerassistant directly to the consumers during daytime.

but i want to prevent overcharging the batterybank. so i thought when i use dvcc on all victorn equipement with a max charge current limiter i hoped to solve the issue.

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Alexandra avatar image Alexandra ♦ marc-heide commented ·
You sound like you need solar to assist loads. Do you have any installed?

Your grid amp connection is how large?

The 10Kva quattro is able to charge at 140A each so that is 3/4 of the US5000 CCL. But that is 29A of your AC incoming until it reaches close to full charge. How often is the system power assisting your loads?

The second lot of inverters for charge would not be able to integrate into the system (as they will not be part of the main VEBus setup and a GX can only control one VE Bus system), so cannot be controlled by the DVCC in the main system you can use assistants on the main system to activate and deactivate the extra inverters based on bulk charging and battery bank voltage. But using the generator makes no sense there.

Simpler solution is to upgrade your grid connection, or add solar as mentioned by others here.


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marc-heide avatar image marc-heide Alexandra ♦ commented ·
Main issue is not getting an upgrade connection.
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Ventura López Kalász avatar image
Ventura López Kalász answered ·

Hi @Marc Heide! First of all, little disclaimer: I'm not a Victron professional and can only speak from my experience with the Victron and Pylontech hardware I own. That being said, here's my two cents :-)


- Let's get one little caveat out of the way first. I'm not exactly sure if you plan on having MPPTs connected to this, but bear in mind that the ColorControl GX only has one CAN bus, which in your case is going to be connected to the batteries (through one of these), leaving only the option of VE.Direct to communicate with the MPPTs; and you might run out of them fast (see here), as they cannot be daisy-chained like with CAN. Depending on your system you might have to go with a Cerbo or Octo.

- I'm not exactly sure why you would separate the battery banks. It depends on the specific model, but most Pylontech batteries can be paralled up to 8 units without need of a hub. They'll be on the same DC bus anyway, won't they?

- Pylontech batteries have their own BMS. Once connected through CAN and correctly configured to work with your victron equipment, said BMS acts as master, scaling max current input to the number of units in parallel (37A * # of units in the case of US3000 batteries, but it becomes less and less as SOC goes above 90%). Wouldn't worry too much in that department, but do double wire them if you go above four units.

- I also don't quite understand why you would add the Multipluses. Doesn't it add a lot of unneeded complexity? A cool feature of the Quattros is that they come with two AC-ins (and two AC-outs, for that matter). The Quattros default to the AC-input there's voltage on, except in the case when there's voltage on both, where they'll switch to AC-in-1. So the most usual scenario is to wire the generator to AC-in-1 and "shore" to AC-in-2. Anyway, why have the generator running when there's shorepower? ;-)


Hopefully some of this helps!


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marc-heide avatar image marc-heide commented ·

Thank you for your answer!


i would defenitly use a cerbo in this system so that would not be an issue

- yes they wil be on the sam dc bus. possible 1 meter seperated from each other.

- the max charging amps information from the battery's is just what i need.

- the idea is that the main quattro or multiplus 10kva (not decided yet). Using powerassitant during the day to provide all the power needed. but the battery's also need some extra charge because the 10kva multiplusses are using powerassist all time because of the high load connected.

so that is why im looking for a solution to have addiotional multiplusses to charge the battery's. i whas hoping this could be connected all together to a cerbo. where is set my max charge current limiter in dvcc. so i will never overcharge the battery's.

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Phil Gavin avatar image
Phil Gavin answered ·

"the quattro's will run on the shorepower most of the time. I want to get an additional generator connected to the multiplus only to charge the battery's.

becuase otherwise i will get issue's by using 2 different inputs?"


This statement puzzles me.

a) If you are connected to shorepower that can be used to charge the batteries through the Quattros, and there is no need for the smaller units.

b) If shorepower is unavailable the second input of the Quattro can be used by the same proposed generator to charge the batteries. The 2 AC inputs into the Quattro are prioritized over one another so that if one is live the 2nd (out of phase) supply can't be paralleled.

So if I am understanding your question correctly, the Quattros alone should achieve what you want by themselves, and indeed be more capable at it that another set of smaller Multi's.


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marc-heide avatar image marc-heide commented ·

thank you for your answer!

a) the shorepower is maxed out so the quattro's are already in powerassistant during daytime.

b)because the shorepower is always availible and we want to reduce as much emissions as possible.


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Phil Gavin avatar image Phil Gavin marc-heide commented ·

Does the generator have to be 3ph? If it can be 1ph then only one extra charger is needed.

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Mike Dorsett avatar image Mike Dorsett marc-heide commented ·

it looks to me like you need to uprate the shore power connection, or reduce your load. Running an AUX generator to boost the charging power will only increase your emissions.

As far as the CAN bus is concerned, I would expect the Venus Gx device can only control one set of inverters, and would not have the capability to also control a set of multi's in charger mode. his would be outside of the software's design scope. IF you really wanted something like this to work, it could be done with custom code, with a second CAN bus 'listener' on the BMS can used to control the independent charging.


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shaneyake avatar image shaneyake Mike Dorsett commented ·

Sometimes not available or way to costly to make sense. I have several clients that can not upgrade their service.Utility says area is overloaded already.

You can actually connect multiple GX devices CAN to the same batteries.

DVCC kind of works in this cause.

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johanndo avatar image
johanndo answered ·

You cannot use both AC inputs at the same time. Usually you have the generator on AC1 and the shore power on AC2, AC1 has priority over AC2 and can be configured to use a more unstable input voltage and frequency.

Either AC input will charge your battery when in automatic mode, as long as the output current on AC1-Out and AC2-Out does not exceed the set AC input current limit of the active input, otherwise the Quattro would power assist using the battery.


By setting the current limits you can protect your devices, AC input currents protect shore power and generator connections from overload, and the set max charge current protects the battery. Max discharge current makes no sense, as you design your battery and inverter system for the maximum load. If you have to limit the load current you either choose the wrong battery size or the wrong inverter.

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raphael avatar image
raphael answered ·

You probably won't need the additional multis. Your 10kVA Quattros will do the job just fine.

Are you sure, that you have continious loads, that are constandly above the shore powers capabilities?

What loads do you run (how much continious power?)
What is the shore power limit?
When shorepower is available 24/7, charging back the batteries at nicht might be sufficient...so increasing the battery capacity might do the trick.

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shaneyake avatar image
shaneyake answered ·

Your setup sounds good to me. I specialize in these abnormal setups. I have done something similar to this before but to clean the AC power used on site.

You can connect the multiplus-ii group of inverters to the Cerbo using a MK3 to usb adapter.
The second group confuses the normal GX software but you can do all the control you require in NodeRed on the Cerbo.

This sounds like a fun project and I am happy to get involved if you need help. Especially as the software side won't be very straight forward but you can definitely hold some max power per phase from grid, use the a bank quattro's or mutltiplus's to run your loads and use another bank to keep batteries charged as well as control genny depending on a set of conditions.

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