question

sportswagoneer avatar image
sportswagoneer asked

WHat does the VE.Bus Control Node SOC% actually do?

In the updated NODE-RED, the VE.BUS system control node has a value for "VE.Bus state of charge (%)". The docs has limited info: The dbus path is /Soc and the type is float.

What does it do? Does it overwrite the SOC in case you have a better measurement source or does it specify an SOC level for which to enter float (maintaining that SOC level)?

(I've written a flow some years ago to keep the LiFePo batteries in my sailboat from charging to 100% when it's not in use by manipulating the switch settings. It'll then oscilate between 75% and 80% until I throw a switch to charge to 100% before going sailing. Being able to specify a float value by SOC would be a much more elegant solution.)

EDIT: No ESS on this system (a boat.) I see there’s some mentioning of “ESS SOC” around the forum - which seems to act like what I want (the ability to set a desired SOC for the system to reach and then enter float.) Might this NODE-RED item only work with ESS?

SOCNode-REDmultiplus ve.bus
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1 Answer
hominidae avatar image
hominidae answered ·

,,,I am not using the contrib nodes myself, only direct interfacing via mqtt, so I cannot comment from real world experience.

But according to the documentation, the Path /soc is from the Battery-Monitor-Node, which is an Input Node, see: https://github.com/victronenergy/node-red-contrib-victron/wiki/Available-nodes#battery-monitor

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