ESS Mode 3 how to switch MultiPlus off but keep MPPTs charging?

I’m looking for a way to put the MultiPlus II into passthrough mode but keep the MPPTs charging the battery.

Solar production at the moment is pretty low and I would like to charge the battery from it while simultaneously preventing the MultiPlus from compensating my loads.

The passthrough mode can be achieved by disabling charging and feed in while in ESS mode 3. But that results in disabling charging from the MPPTs as well. Leaving charging / feed in enabled and setting the Multiplus set point 0 W results in a pretty high standby consumption. It’s not really a standby consumption it’s more like the MultiPlus is not disabling its inverter and is feeding something between 10-20W into the grid.

Would love to hear if there is a solution for this.

I am not sure if it helps you but in our Motorhome I set the current input limit on the remote panel to 0.0, this gives me charging to the batteries and 12v whilst disabling charging from shorepower.
anything on the 240v circuit continues via passthrough.
once it gets dark i set the current input limit to 1.0 if there is a need.

I have this flow in node-red to disable feed-in if the power is 0. The function checks to see if both phases are 0 and disable feed-in. I need this because I have a negative feed-in and if the grid meter goes offline the multiplus goes full noise try to get the grid 0.

You could use this and input a relay state.

I also have this flow that adjusts DVCC based on the voltage of the battery and checks the SOC so I only use solar for absorption. I also set the DVCC to 0 overnight so this ESS does not charge from the other 2 ESS systems I have.

These settings all work perfectly and as expected. I hope this can give you some ideas.

If you want to disable feed-in all the time you can just inject a 1 like this,

[
{
“id”: “9899236b8139d3fc”,
“type”: “victron-output-ess”,
“z”: “1112bdc43019f870”,
“service”: “com.victronenergy.vebus/289”,
“path”: “/Hub4/DisableFeedIn”,
“serviceObj”: {
“service”: “com.victronenergy.vebus/289”,
“name”: “MultiPlus 12/1200/50-16”
},
“pathObj”: {
“path”: “/Hub4/DisableFeedIn”,
“type”: “enum”,
“name”: “Disable feed-in”,
“enum”: {
“0”: “No”,
“1”: “Yes”
},
“writable”: true
},
“initial”: “”,
“name”: “”,
“onlyChanges”: false,
“x”: 1620,
“y”: 980,
“wires”:
},
{
“id”: “22fb13dc618b4d28”,
“type”: “victron-input-ess”,
“z”: “1112bdc43019f870”,
“service”: “com.victronenergy.vebus/289”,
“path”: “/Hub4/DisableFeedIn”,
“serviceObj”: {
“service”: “com.victronenergy.vebus/289”,
“name”: “MultiPlus 12/1200/50-16”
},
“pathObj”: {
“path”: “/Hub4/DisableFeedIn”,
“type”: “enum”,
“name”: “Disable feed-in”,
“enum”: {
“0”: “No”,
“1”: “Yes”
}
},
“initial”: “”,
“name”: “”,
“onlyChanges”: false,
“x”: 1620,
“y”: 1040,
“wires”: [

]
},
{
“id”: “7c58925f1b4f733d”,
“type”: “inject”,
“z”: “1112bdc43019f870”,
“name”: “”,
“props”: [
{
“p”: “payload”
},
{
“p”: “topic”,
“vt”: “str”
}
],
“repeat”: “1”,
“crontab”: “”,
“once”: true,
“onceDelay”: 0.1,
“topic”: “”,
“payload”: “1”,
“payloadType”: “num”,
“x”: 1350,
“y”: 980,
“wires”: [
[
“9899236b8139d3fc”
]
]
}
]

If you want to get rid of a Multi’s idle consumption (~20W for a 48V 5kVA MP2) you’ll need to turn it off, but that’ll cut power to it’s AC Out.
One way to keep devices running would be to install a bypass / transfer switch so devices switch to plain grid when the Multi is off.

Unfortunately it seems you can’t disable/enable the Multi’s charger (to put it in passthrough) purely by software, as that will also disable MPPT charging.
One solution I’m exploring myself would be to use the charger assistant and an Aux input on the Multi to disable/enable the charger and thus passthrough mode.

Setting the gridpoint to a value lower than your consumption will keep the inverter on as (D)ESS tries to compensate your load.
What you can try is to a) disable to charger using aux input and charge rate assistant and b) set a very high grid point.
This will prevent the inverter from compensating your load while at the same time prevent it pulling energy from the grid to charge the batteries, effectively going in true passthrough mode.