I live in Uganda and am pretty much without help other than what I find online, for my solar setup. I have two possibly related questions. I have a MultiPlus Compact inverter 24/2000/50-30 and a BlueSolar Charger MPPT 100/50 and a bank of batteries.
#1. Twice now my whole system has shut down in the night even though its been working great for many months. One time it shut down for like an hour then restarted itself. Another time it shut down for about 5 minutes. We noticed because it made our fan turn off. I’ll try to attach some photos showing the voltage drops on the charts. I can’t think of what could be causing this.
#2 - I wanted to update the firmware on the inverter, just in case it would fix problem #1. But I’ve literally spent an entire day trying to do so, and it keeps failing. Three ways I’ve tried.
In the online portal, I update the drivers, follow the instructions, it gets the downloadable file, I upload the config file, and then still it shows the firmware has not been updated. I wonder if its an issue of my firmware being so old that I can’t update them so drastically, but I couldn’t find any intermediate firmware versions.
I tried with the Victron connect app, but when I go to the inverter and go into the settings, it says “settings disabled” and have to access locally using an MK3 device.
I’ve tried to connect my computer, and another computer, to the MK3 device which is connected to the rasperry pi and the inverter. But whenever I do so, the inverter does not show up on the list of devices on my computer, so still can’t access the settings of the inverter to change it.
After spending a day trying to update the firmware, I gave up with much frustration and wasted time.
Some additional photos of our setup. We believe these low battery alarms are somehow false. The batteries should be around 80% or so when these alarms are registering.
At 25 and 24v the battery is actually in a discharged state. The system is shutting down on low battery. This will be partly due to programming.
That should be closer to 28volts For a full bank.
What version is your GX on? Also have a feeljng the problem with your uodates is related to the what appears to be that your gx is powered by ac. Which can cause issues if there are power interruptions…
With the mk3 you have you enable settings with zzz. It is in the manual (also mentioned os that on a firmware update the aettjngs are reset to factory defaults).
Read the manual. It also has a walk through video.
Battery cables are a bit long for the gauge you have chosen. This can cause some charging issues. Do you have a multimeter? For a bit of diy self training there is wiring unlimited download on this page here.
Thank you so much for your reply. Yes I have watched that video and several others and several manuals. For some reason I cannot get my computer to connect to the MK3 as described above. When I connect it, the inverter stops showing up in the app on my phone, or on my computer. So it’s not working. If I try to do it remotely through the phone app, it gives me “settings disabled” needing to connect to the MK3.
Is the GX the same as the raspberry pi? If so, I read somewhere that it has to be connected to AC, not the inverter, especially in firmware updating.
First off, I mostly use VRM for monitoring and firmware update. I have VictronConnect and MK3 though I rarely use them. Though I also don’t have that model of inverter, you should be able to update your firmware through VictronConnect or MK3.
However, your problem is likely to be damaged batteries or wrong shutdown inverter settings. If your setup used to work before, something could have changed in the meantime, like a battery gone bad. Do you have a multimeter?
A pi is a small computer which can work in place of the GX provided the right software called Venus OS from Victron is loaded.
In short, check your batteries, settings and wiring.
The local electrician had a look (he had helped the person who installed the system too).
The batteries were all reading quite low voltage, even though they were supposedly at 85% charge.
They were between 5.6 and 6.5 volts each.
The good thing I suppose is that he found two loose connections that he tightened. One was a wire going into the charger unit, and the other was a connection on a battery. We will monitor and see if there is any improvement with those connections tightened.
The system turned off again last night. It did not come back on until the solar started charging the batteries again. I tried to manually turn it off and back on several times, but each time it shut itself down after 30 seconds of giving us power. It seems the system simulatenously knows that the batteries are dead, while also showing that the batteries have 83% charge left. So it’s either that our batteries are spoiled, or the SOC reading is really wrong, and therefore the system is not charging the batteries enough. ???
Do the batteries get charged to at keast 28.6 or 28.8v every day? Then held at that higher voltage? Don’t even worry about the state of charge for now that can be incorrect for many reasons. And we have not even discussed how the syste is programmed yet. What matters is the voltages. You can check the vrm for that.
If they have not been then they are chronically undercharged. And because they are lead acid based are ruined.
The second thing is in a built bank you need balancers and mid point monitoring.
Thank you. If you have specific questions about how the system is programmed, let me know and I will try to answer, or look through my settings to answer.
To answer your question about the voltages, I have some screenshots of different days that can hopefully answer that. It looks like from the charts that they get up to that level of charge, but don’t stay there for whatever reason. Yet, from our monitoring of SOC, we see the batteries get up to 100% and stay there for hours. So are you saying the voltage is a better indication of battery charge, compared to the SOC stat?
At this point should we ask a professional to come from the capital city to inspect everything, or do we buy new batteries, or what do you advise?
Ok. So short answer from the grpahs above, if that is the trend, no they haven’t been charged through their charge cycle to full. So they are likely not well.
What you are going to need to do and i know that it isnot easy if you have plenty grid outages, is set the system to keep battery charged for a few days then re asses how they handle discharge.
Check while they are i that state if they are reaching the programmed absorption voltage. And check the individual cells while in that state.
Although i can say from experience that cycling lead acid battery banks is definitely the fastest track to replacement.
Thank you once again for your repeated help. I know it takes time.
I have set the ESS to 100% so that the grid will keep the batteries charged fully. The grid is off right now, but usually it is on for about a week at a time before an outage. So we can try what you suggested. And then have an electrician come again to test the batteries again after those few days while they are supposedly at 100% SOC.
We had a technician come for a big fee. It “might” be fixed. We were able to update the firmware. And it turns out one battery had a fault and very low voltage. So we removed that one , and are using 4 batteries for now, instead of 8. And monitoring. Hopefully all will be good!
Since the fix, there is one change I notice, not sure it matters. Before we had it set that the grid always charged 30 watts minimum, so as to prevent the flow going the other way (read in the manual you need to have this). And it’s still set to that. But now I’m seeing sometimes the grid is charging 30 watts minimum, and sometimes its doing nothing at all, and then 10 minutes later, will go back to the 30 watts. This is all with the grid not actually shutting off. Why would this flucutation be there?
