Unanswered Questions in mppt state

hi there!

I upgraded my system with the inverter in the title, and I have trouble setting it up correctly with my system, problems I have so far:

>solar charger will not start charging even though it has energy.

>not sure how to setup batteries, I have lifepo4 ones (4 in series) and they have a rudimentary bms, which is not accessible from the outside, no BT or CAN or similar)

>I decided to keep the solar charger (smart solar 150/70) of the prior system connected, currently it is charging the batteries, but the RS will seemingly randomly shut down

so about the shutdowns: in two days I got the #29 "battery overcharge" error code twice, yesterday noon when the solar charger (of the smart solar unit, mind you) went into absorption mode, and voltage was 56.80V, interestingly the RS showed slightly higher values than the solar charger. also the 4 series 12v batteries were not perfectly balanced yet, I have since installed 3 battery balancers from victron, and they are dead on balanced since yesterday evening.

so the second shutdown was weird though, it happened when there was little to no sun in the morning today, the batteries were at about 75% and the voltage was way off the maximum. this led me to try to dive into the menus to fix the issue, and to try to feed the MPPT of the RS instead, but as initially pointed out, I did not even get it to charge at all, not sure why.

so to sum it up, this unit is a bit weird for me, I used to have a cheap chinese inxiii 2400w 24V inverter which workes flawlessly without a single shutdown since about october in my old 24V system, with 4 of the same batteries.

what's happening here?

two thoughts I had:

>maybe I need to change battery preset to anything but lifepo4, albeit my batteries are lifepo4.

>maybe I need to find a way do disable the BMS? why does and inverter have a bms anyway? I was not aware of this initially.

any hints tips or an outright solution would be highly appreciated. if some pro could give me guidance on how to setup the battery that I have (for which there is not preset) that would be awesome.

I had no issues setting up the battery with the smart solar 150/70, but it doesn't have fancy bms tech, either, does it?

cheers,

bill

p.s.: I can't leave my home rn, as a fridge sits on this inverter, and when it decides to protect me (forced protection seems to be quite trendy these days, especially by governments) even though the BMS inside my german made (no, not german assembled, but german made) expensive lifepos is doing a nice job with overvoltage, overcharge, undervoltage, undercharage, overtemp, and undertemp protection.

p.p.s.: some more thoughts/observations:

>battery voltage measurement is exactly 0.05V higher from the RS than either the smart shunt or the MPPT150/70 during charging, I think it is about the opposite (lower by 0.05V) when discharging, but I will report back on this in the evening. what could this indicate?

>just checked in the RS' history tab, there are three errors, some hopefully due to me installing and connecting things, cause I never noticed them before, the are: #29 overcharge protection (we know this one), #10 battery low voltage (probably cause I disconnected the battery when connecting the balancers) #53 Inverter internal DC level (curious about this one). the main takaway here though is the max recorded voltage of my string of 4: 56.96V, which even if the RS shows .05V more than the other devices, is still "only" 14.24 per battery, which has an end of charge voltage of exactly 14.4V, according to spec-sheet. so again, what's happening here?

> is it possible the RS is not really designed or compatible to be used in inverter only mode, with a separate charge controller like I do? to me it seems the RS somehow "thinks" "look, the battery voltage is rising while I am not charging it, so it must be faulty? better shut it down" and then shuts down..?

I have two 150/70 mppt’s. One is in “float”, while the other has been in “bulk” for days. One the cerbo screen this mppt (the one in bulk) is showing that it is in “off” state. My battery charge is at 100%. I don’t turn shore power off much. But when I do and the batteries need to recharge it seems to take forever (all daylight) to bring them back to 100% regardless of how much charge was used. I am really at a loss. Can anyone help?

Hi everybody,

On our camper we have 4 victron solar panels of 175W (~24V, ~9.5A). We have sets of two panels in series wired to their own 100/30 SmartSolar Charger which are connected to our 12V battery system. This has been working for many months without issues, but since a day or three one of the two charge controllers is not functioning properly anymore. The other one is working just fine.

Instead of the expected 32-48V PV voltage during the day it only measures 16-24V - displaying only half of the voltage that is measured on the PV pins of the controller. And as a result, the controller turns itself on and off because it drops below battery voltage + 5V sometimes.

To test if there is a problem with the MPPT or the array, we have swapped the two controllers - and as expected (by the fact that a different voltage is measured on the pins) it's the controller that is acting weirdly.

The dealer told us there is probably something wrong with the controller and we should get this one tested and replace it with a new one. But I would like to understand a bit better what could have gone wrong. Did anyone experience similar issues with a controller like this?

Cheers,

Joy

I think Victron needs to change the firmware.

This is a new install. 2 75/10 in parallel with the battery. Load outputs are disconneted. No other Victron devices present and the 2 MPPTs are 4 inches apart.

At low load and full battery SOC one of the Mppts will go to 0 W (not always the same one). Now when I add load such as turning on my freezer. The MPPT will remain at 0 W even though the battery is discharging.

The only way to get it working is to disable charging on BOTH MPPTs, Then re enable the one at 0W first.

But then, if I shut off the freezer. Both MPPTs will go into absorption mode even though the battery is 100% SOC.

After a while one or the other MPPT will go to 0W and the cycle begins again where it will never output power until both are disabled and re-enabled.

Just got new TT and MPPT 100/30 show state off virtual on. Attached configuration file

I am using a MPPT75/15 and a solar panel Wattstunde 120SPS (Voc 21,8V ISC 6,8A) to load the LiFePo battery of my camper. For the last two years everything worked well.

During the last trip the system stopped working in bright sunshine. The MPPT was switched off without any known reason and did not resume working. Sometimes this lasts one day, or even several days.

Firmware reset and disconnecting / reconnect both battery and solar panel did not solve the problem.

I checked all connections as well as the panel which delivers around 22V (open circuit) and 2 to 3A short current.

Yesterday I could record the strange behaviour (see attached screenshot). The MPPT starts to load the battery in the morning. During the day it reaches float voltage. In this state the loading current was reduced to nearly zero. But after some time the MPPT swithes off and shows a solar voltage equivalent to the battery voltage. Because I need some light to work in the car the battery was discharged. The voltage drops below bulk voltage (13,5V) minus bulk offset (0,1V) but the system does not start loading again. I disconnected the solar panel to measure the electrical values which have been ok. This time the MPPT starts working again after reconnecting. As described above the MPPT stays in Off-mode after reconnect.

[image]

May be this is a software problem?

Are there any suggestions how to sort out the problem?

[image]

hi I have :

Problem a 3680 w ( 92v x 40 amp )system is only producing a few hundred watts ( 100- 400 W) output

1. Victron multiplus ii
   • ,48/5000/70-50,
2. Victron mppt charge controller
   • 150/70 tr 5 kva /5kw
   • 150 V max 50 Amp
3. BAAG 200amp GEL/AGM battery, 4 x 12v in series to 48 V
4. Renessys PV panels x 10 PV Panel fuse 32 A 1000v dc - df pmx
   • 10x wired =series (2) Parallel (5)
   • Each pair is 92 v ( 2x 46v) ,
   • 8 amps x 5 parallel = 40 amps
   • Tested on roof ie before cable down V (open) on every panel range from 41 to 42 v - winter.
5. PV Panel fuse 32 A 1000v dc - df pmx 10x Each pair is 92 v ( 2x 46v) at 8 amps
6. Cable down from roof at 10 m outer diameter( ie around insulation) is 5mm - could this be the problem ?
7. System - Relay 1 state - open
8. Winter ( OVERCAST) can see any shading problem on roof
   • no errors
   • no trees
   • Clean
   • may be slight blocking of some tips of panels by other panels in afternoon sun
   • but this cannot account for such a unacceptable output ie 10 %
   • see gateway and solar charger in vrm out put
   • solar charge v = 84 v approx
   • pv current 3.5 v ???
   • solar charger battery voltage max 57.5v
   • solar charger battery current max 4 amps
   • System - ESS Battery life state = stuck on restarting ??
   • solar charge summary battery
     • battery watts = 66w
     • charge state = float,
     • voltage = =55.6v ,
     • yield today = .26kwh, ???
     • yesterday .48 watts ??
   • MPPT state ( 258 )
     • off till 7 am
     • then till 10 am = bulk ,
     • after 10 am = float

   • solar charger battery volt battery went from 54 v - 51,6 v THEN DOWN TO 55.2 V

   • System battery power = no data
   • System battery voltage = 54 51 and 57 to 55.5 v
   • PV yield during blackout 8 am to 10 am today (ie grid blackout )
     • before blackout= 0 w
     • 8am - 10am = 200 watts ???
     • amps from .6 amps to 4 amps
     • after 10 am battery quickly went 50.4v - 57.6 v and amps went from 0 amps to 1.2 am
   • why such low watts and amps