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victronvalhowell6283 avatar image
victronvalhowell6283 asked

Best way to optimize solar charging on boat

This application is for a boat. Multiplus 3000 (only one AC in) ,BMV712, Cerbo with GX50, 4 Victron MPPT controllers.

Desired outcome shore based...have solar handle all 12 v and 110v loads via Multi until battery state gets to a designated level (voltage or SOC based)

Desired outcome when away from shore (no shore power, but generator is available with manual start) ... have solar and batteries handle all loads (no issue here) but allow AC in from generator regardless of battery voltage or SOC when generator is turned on. This is done due to state of charge or to get hot water.

Virtual Switch has been tried with no luck. As others have indicated, this often does not work as expected. Need to reconfigure system to use generator when away from shore.

Sustain mode stall allows 110 systems to be run from shore power and this violates the desired outcome stated above.

ESS might do this job, but all I read says done use ESS on maritime applications.

All assistants that look helpful have been deprecated so I am not sure if I should use them.

There are a lot of maritime and RV users out there. Has anyone found a way to solve this problem?

Suggestions?



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3 Answers
Alexandra avatar image
Alexandra answered ·

@victronvalhowell6283

Solar wind priority

Generator assistant

Use the GX generator function to override ac ignore (works better than virtual switch and allows easy interactions to override it for when you want to use the generator)

Node red on Venus os large with some code.



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victronvalhowell6283 avatar image
victronvalhowell6283 answered ·

Thanks Alexandra. I wanted to clarify a couple things... are solar priority and generator assist both needed or are you saying one or the other? the Generator assist uses the PV Inverter assistant. does this still work of there is no PV inverter in the system?


the article on using the GX generator function to override AC ignore is very interesting but it only seems to work if the two relays are wired together as this person did.

any clarification would be helpful

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Alexandra avatar image Alexandra ♦ commented ·

Solar wind is designed for those who want to stay connected. But there is no reason you can't use both it and the generator start stop idea.

Skip the pv inverter assistant. That was just an example code in the article. Yes you have two wire the two relays to each other.

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Rob Fijn avatar image
Rob Fijn answered ·

@victronvalhowell6283

I would do this as follows.
AC shore line to a relay and then to a Manual selection Switch and then to the AC_IN of the MP-II. The Generator connects also to the Manual Selection Switch.
The relay you control with the Generator Start/Stop function in the Cerbo, based on SOC or Voltage.. what every you wish.

I believe this would solve your problem.

Regards,

Rob

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