I have a Cerbo/Multiplus setup with a Felicity 15 kWh battery as an extension to an SMA system that includes three solar inverters and one AC-coupled battery. The system performs zero adjustment and works fine overall.
The problem is that I cannot add a second SMA battery and thus optetd for Victron. Currently, I have the described hardware and a Node-RED flow that can read:
the house’s power consumption,
the output of the three inverters,
the input/output of the other battery and its SOC.
This allows me to calculate the desired power distribution (e.g., 2/3 to the Felicity battery and 1/3 to the other battery). I thought everything worked fine over the summer, but now it behaves strangely—it no longer reacts.
I can see the correct power value calculated at the last debug node before sending the request to the Multiplus, but it seems I’ve been using the wrong node for that final step all along (ESS Control Node with AC Power L1 setpoint).
My question:
What node and configuration should I use if I have a watt value that I want to send to the Multiplus to charge or discharge from the battery? Everything else works perfectly….
I’ve just discovered that a recent software update seems to have fundamentally changed how ESS control works, and this is catastrophic for my setup.
Previously, the ESS Control node could talk directly to the MultiPlus and set an AC Power L1 setpoint. That option appears to have been removed. Now, control must go through Venus settings (e.g., the grid point), which only allows steering to 0 (or some set point) on the grid. This introduces several independent problems:
Why this breaks my system
My goal is not to drive the grid to zero. I want to take about two-thirds of the surplus into my Victron battery with a slow adjustment every 30 seconds, while my SMA battery (with its own logic) handles the rest quickly.
This worked perfectly before: no bouncing between batteries, stable operation.
Now, both systems compete for zero grid flow, causing messy results. Even if I try to leave e.g. 500 W for SMA, the new logic sees the SMA pushing it to 0 and tunes the MP down down, breaking the coordination.
Additional issue (see screenshots)
My virtual grid meter (implemented via Waldlaufers friendly GitHub contribution to read Homemanager2 from SMA) is still displayed but no longer honored. This is not the old “external control” bug – it simply doesn’t work anymore.
Does this mean I now need a physical meter? Tweaking the virtual one seems pointless if ESS ignores it.
Victron’s suggested workaround
I understand Victron recommends adding a second physical grid meter.
This could probably work by inserting SMA battery power between them, then controlling the setpoint dynamically. But that’s not what I want – and it feels like an unnecessary hardware purchase for something that worked before.
My questions
Can I downgrade to restore the previous functionality?
Is there any way to achieve the old behavior with the current system?
Could I synthesize a fake grid meter from the real one and manipulate outputs so Victron thinks it’s steering to zero, while leaving SMA to handle the rest? Any ideas or best practices? Doing in essence excatly what is being warned about in the other screenshot?
This change has a huge impact on hybrid setups like mine. I’d really appreciate guidance from Victron or anyone who has solved this.
yes you can roll back the venus software to the previous working version.
typically in a complex set up like yours, once it is fully working, software or firmware upgrades should be avoided in order not to encounter this type of issue.
Usually it is a better way to “fix” your control way to match any eventual changes rather than sticking to a prior version “where another way worked”. Doing that would prevent you from any further updates and make you miss any optimization or eventual bug fixes of regular mechanics as well as new features.
From which version to which did you upgrade? There wasn’t any huge change to ESS-Control quite a while.
Did you upgrade the Inverter Firmware as well? Then, mind a firmware upgrade will reset the very basic firmware settings (VE Configure) to defaults, so it may be as easy as your inverters beeing no longer configured as required / expected.
For example, the ESS-Assistant may have been removed from your devices, hence any control through ESS-Setpoints is not going to do anything.
I totally agree, downgrading is the worst option, i´d much rather solve the problem another way, like get the function back that was removed. I want to stay updated in case of future zero day exploits etc that might need to be fixed.
Unfortunately I don´t know what version I had and what was updated when and why, I updated the Victon pallete in Node Red trying to fix things, but the Venus was the most current version. Last succesful charge of my battery was Dec 12th, see picture, (at 20% I switch the MPII off).
Dec 13 and 14 the system stayed off, dec 14 the battery switched off as well, Dec 18th I noticed but could not restart the battery. Yesterday I managed to charge it by going in ESS to keep battery charged. But it does not discharge any more. Then I treid a lot of things until I noticed the control node was marked as not working and checking it the option AC Power L1 setpoint was no longer available. Update of the Victorn pallette didn´t help.
Please add the option again to this Node!
@dfaber Probably has a better Idea when and why certain control options are available in Nodered.
If you dont know all the involved versions, tracing compatibility issues may be impossible. So, first step could be to upgrade everything to most recent version.
I am on all most recent versions as far as I know.
Seems like my system ran a long time withot any erroer but at the recent restat it didn´t work any more becausae of the updates that came in.
No warnings etc.
Can someone give me back this feature I need?
Or tell me what I need to do to talk to the MPII directly via MODBUS?
Use a custom control node set to the inverter as the source (custom dropdown).
As far as I can see the L1 setpoint is a HUB4 parameter, which is available in that node.
