DESS | trade mode | unexpected pulling from grid

First said, I’m generally very happy with the victron system!

Aim:

Gaining with trade mode a little better sales price for solar excess energy by selling it during night time from the battery.

Setup:

  • FW: v3.70, large image, node-red

  • 3-phase ess

  • multiplus-II 5000

  • battery (delong energy) 5x10kWh, CAN bus

  • System overview:

  • Note: the SoC min was finally set to the very low 5%, because at the end of feeding from the battery in the morning, the min SoC limit was not reached by far → remaining e.g. by 20% before

  • DESS:

  • Note: The configured max. feed in power is limited to 6kW, to provide low and continous feeding in periods.

  • fixed price for selling/buying: the values chosen are to control the trading → first priority: providing the EEG (renewable energy community) with better selling prices and providing the community; secondly to the energy provider

  • DESS / charge/discharge limitation / usage of battery → prevent charging battery from grid was enabled (27-07-2026) → problem of charging from grid still happens, see below.

Problem:

The issue I’m having is that the dess is pulling sometimes from grid even:

  • the costs are high
  • the min SOC is not reached
  • no VE bus warnings / alarms

The behaviour is typically starting at the end of feeding to grid in the early morning.

I can not find the issue which triggers this behaviour!?

Please have a look at the screenshots from such days.

02.08.2026:

VRM:

29.07.2026:

VRM:

Many thanks in advance!

Your buy price isn’t changing, so cost wise, the sell price being high is irrelevant when buying from the grid. But that aside, l got a hunch that there might be a 2 hour offset bug somewhere in the scheduling in combination with the fixed pricing. It will take bit more time before I am fully sure of that.

Thank you for your support!

My intension was to set the buying price high, to prevent buying during months with excessive solar.

I do have actually a fixed price for selling/buying.

In regard to buying, more accurately its like that, so called SNAP (Sommer Nieder Arbeits Preis): From April 1st to September 30th, it reduces the consumption-based grid usage fee (energy price) for household customers by 20 percent daily between 10:00 AM and 4:00 PM. The prerequisite is a smart meter with activated 15-minute interval metering (IME/Opt-In).

From this graph here, I would conclude (purple lines), that the scheduler still kept sending “discharge-targets” by the time your battery started to charge.

The targets then get corrected “up”, as your SOC raises rather than goes down, but still consecurive targets are “lower” than the Soc-line.

If DESS would have suddenly decided to charge again, the target-soc values would be ABOVE the actual soc-line.

So, I think “something else” (not DESS) is forcing your battery / inverters into charging.

You should review cell-voltages / battery voltages when this happens, if that drops unexpected low for the given Soc, emergency-mechanics to prevent deep-discharging may kick in.

Thank you for your support.

Sorry but I can not fully follow your thoughts in this regard, maybe you can share some more details about the logic/strategy of the DESS!?

I guess the “Venus system - The set target SOC for this time slot” is THE setpoint for the charging/discharging to follow?

Nevertheless, I also thought there might be an issue with the ve configure settings, therefore I did some corrections :

Updated VE configure file via VRM (Date: 03.08.2026): mainly because for correction of

  • battery capacity from 330Ah to 1000Ah → before I thought 1/3 is needed, due to 3-phase system (3 multis)
  • changed the dynamic-cut-off voltage to lower and equal levels → to ensure no internal throttling or generate a warning (limit calculation in connection with battery capacity)
  • changed installed AC PV power (hoymiles micro HMT2250-6T), for the same reason as for the battery capacity; monitored via VM-3P75CT

installed a power meter at AC-IN (Date: 05.08.2026 approx. 16:30) via additional VM-3P75CT → in order to have a more accurate measurement of grid feeding/delivering because:

  • During midday, when I have enabled one phase of the electric heater for the water boiler “Heizstab” of 3kW via node red (actually via simple time window). There it have been shown/calculating in VRM “pulling from grid” even it was not a real power from grid. My suggestion was that there might be a mismatch due to conversion losses or accuracy of the measurements (multiplus, battery readings from terminals or battery bms itself,…) → wrong energy balance
  • to have a faster, more accurate feedback for better control of grid feed in or pulling

Some more data from today with that unexpeceted pulling from grid, please see the last two screenshots below: