With DESS (Green Mode) activated, I keep getting the alert “DESS error code: ESS functionality not available” in the Portal from every few minutes to once or twice an hour. The DESS seems to do its thing though it never really tries to charge the batteries when the price is low. The “battery balancing charge” every 7 days is working.
ESS worked just fine before.
The Q&A in the DESS manual states:
Q: I am getting the alarm “Dynamic ESS error code: ESS functionality not available”
This probably means that you once activated Dynamic ESS and are no longer using it. In order to fully disable it, you need to set the com.victronenergy.settings, path /Settings/DynamicEss/Mode to 0.
This can be done on different ways, most easily using Node-RED and the output-control node.
So I installed Node-RED on both Multis and was able to switch modes by the workflow in Node-RED which I confirmed in the portal. But switching off DESS like the manual suggested did not change anything.
The setup is:
2x MP-II 5000 GX configured as split phase, connected via VE.Bus
1x Fronius Symo 5.0.3
4x Growatt MIC-3000
10x Pylontech US2000C Batteries, BMS connected via VE.Can to L1
We’ve been noticing these short alarms too. And agreed that these are pretty annoying.
Strangely enough they aren’t happening on every site, but your seems to be suffering from it a lot. Can you enable remote support so I can check what is actually causing this?
I do notice that the alerts on the master Multi had been reduced to only a couple after the first hours with the update. In the meantime however, they have become excessive again on both multis:
While the patch that we made will help in most cases where we see short-lived alarms, it isn’t sufficient for your site.
When digging deeper into the system, I asked the help from colleagues to also take a look at it. What the cause of the problem is on your system goes beyond Dynamic ESS.
Namely that a mistake was made in your install: The second inverter should have been a plain Multiplus 2 without the LCD, and that because of this mistake the two GX modules are fighting each other.
The good news is, that you don’t need to buy new hardware. As you can disable the GX card in one of the units, which can be done by removing the power supply to the board. Your installer should do that for you.
