DC-Loads in VRM with "external meter"?

Hi,

i’m using a few devices inside my “Tech-Room”, which are directly connected to the 48V DC-System. So, to have a complete System-View, I’ve added a meter for these loads, Set the has DC-System to true (in the cerbo) and wrote a tiny script which creates the proper service, based on the meters data.

After some research however, I found that the “DC-Load” Tile is not shown, when the Metering method is set to “External Meter”:

When selecting “Inverter” as metering method, the tile shows up just fine:

image

Is this intended behaviour, or more an older decission to say “Houses with grid meters don’t have DC-loads” - Or is this just a (unknown) bug, cause usually people with meters don’t have dc-loads and therefore don’t miss the tile?


I use an EM24 as an “external meter” and at the same time also a “DC load” and a DC charger. That works great.

However, when charging via the DC charger, a negative load is also displayed at the same time.

that is the beta gui v2, right?

Well, negative DC Load when charging with a DC Chargers makes sence.

So, probably will have to wait, if the release of gui v2 also affects the respective tile becoming visible in vrm as well.

Yes, it is the Gui Mod V2
Charger and load run via separate shunts … so not really that logical at first but not bad.
In VRM nothing works with DC Load …

DC Load / Site is definitely still a construction site for Victron :wink:

I also have an external meter and do not see the DC Load on VRM. However I can see it on the remote console

Just my experiences with the DC tile…

When ‘Has DC System’ is selected in the GX, the tile will show up in Console and VRM, but is populated with data ‘by-difference’, ie missing current flow.
When I added a Smartshunt to measure a DC load, in the shunt settings I allocated it as a ‘DC Energy Meter’ and type ‘DC Load’. Nothing changed.
Following advice from this forum I changed the shunt setting to type ‘DC System’. Then the shunt readings were allocated to the tile. The by-difference calcs gone. No other changes were made anywhere else, just in the shunt.
image
(Couldn’t do this via pc, had to use bt on a phone.)
Read this as you will, but to me the shunt itself sets when it’s data goes to that tile.
Spoofing this is your challenge. For a non-standard ‘meter’, awaiting a fix might be a long wait…

Yes, behaviour is clearly outlined in the docs, that’s no problem and works as expected.

Issue is the tile not beeing displayed at all in VRM, while the ESS Setting “Metering: External Meter” is used. It only appears, when setting the metering to “Inverter”…

Ah, As I type, I noted the devil in the detail:
That selection affects BOTH, AC + DC.
So, when using “External Meter”, DC Load may be invisible, as long as there is no “external meter of Type DC System”.

So, it does not do “Use external meter for AC, but Inverter-Measuring for DC” - it’s either both metered external, or both metered by the inverter.

The only setting with which I could trigger the appearence of the DC-Tile (beside the Additional Required HasDC System-Flag) is the “RunWithoutGridMeter” Setting, which corresponds to the setting “Grid Metering” of ESS:

When selecting “External Meter” as Measurement, that value is immediately set to 0, making VRM disable the DC-tile. (As well as in the cerbo UI)

The Screenshot above (from @Netrange ) also does

  • not show a AC-Load on the AC-IN,
  • showing “AC-Loads” on the right, rather than “critical loads”.

which indicates that - even if a external meter is connected and read by cerbo - the Actual Setting of the Grid Metering Value is configured to “Inverter” and not “External Meter”. Else there would be AC-IN Loads, and the right side (AC-OUT) would be called “Critical Loads”:

That’s the setting taking effect:
image

When there is no ESS-Assistant installed, things may be different at all.

Unfortunately there is 0 documentation about this.

Can you ssh into your cerbo? using dbus-spy and looking at the values that device / service is setting would be super helpful, to figure out, which key needs to be set to DC-System (probably a numeric value), in order to consider the service beeing a DC-Meter :wink:

i’ve created a com.victronenergy.dcsystem-service and the values are allocated to the DC-Tile as expected - but this alone doesn’t make the tile visible at all…

looking at the dbus_systemcalc.py however shows that having a “dcsystem” Service is enough to consider the dc-system beeing metered. That even takes precedence over the hasdcsystem flag:

DC Grids are the future of houses with AC meters. Go on with that project.

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digged into it - Nothing that can be done without modifiying the UI.

The overview page is an all different version, based on the Setting “hasGridMeter”

image

With meter it is loading the OverviewGridParallel.qml - and that one simply doesn’t contain the dc-tile:

So, without having Victron change this here, one would need to provide an override version of the respective qml file to have the tile visible along with a external meter.

(Has no Impact on the VRM HTML App I assume - unless the local qmls are uploaded and used, but doubt it)

I’m going to await the new UI-Update and see if that might have been changed.

In the old forum there are several complaints about the missing DC tile but nothing happend during the last 2-3 years.

Well, from a technical Point of view, I could switch to Inverter-Metering to get the DC-Tile. There is nothing between the multi and the grid - but the meter.

However, as far as i’m aware of, using the Multiplus for metering causes different values for feedin etc, because it doesn’t use net differential metering, but looks at phases separately. - So, in Germany where net differential metering is used for billing, it makes sence to have the device count in the same way - hence an external meter is preferred, even with no AC-Loads beeing there.

Hello. I read this thread and have a question about it. If I understood correctly, you can use an EM 24 to measure DC loads. That means you could also use an ET 112. I have a 600 watt DC consumer on my busbar, but this is not displayed in the VRM. Is it sufficient to connect this ET 112 between the consumer and the busbar?

Many thanks for your reply