On 08-01-2025 at around 1230 till 1330 (Portugal) I got various alarms saying bus failure 3 and a little later bus failure 14, leading to 3 times an automatic restart of the system.
Upon investigation we found (my neighbour was there during the 3rd black-out) that only the 3 yellow bulk leds where on from all 3 inverters, meaning grid high voltage, but no alarm was registered, nor in bus nor the Cerbo or to VRM (not possible) other than the high voltage alarms of these phases.
We found that the voltage must have passed the 270V on at least 2 phases.
E-mail service from VRM was stopped due to their ratelimiter of sending alarms as well.
The spikes were not registered in VRM, but just showing 261 and 263V, see below.
The inverters started up within 10-15 seconds the first 2 times, but the 3rd time can be clearly seen in the graph as it stayed off for 16 minutes.
The issue is, that at the time this happened the inverters were not taking power from the grid, they are always connected and the grid is our emergency generator.
Why does the inverter(s) switches off when the grid voltage is high (but not used) instead of just switch the power off internally to the control board only and continue on its secondary DC power supply, like in island mode without a grid.
Are there any such issues registered in our community, as lately there was a Dutch camping owner who changed to Victron, as he burned his inverters and some PV panels before due to the ever increasing grid voltage in Europe.
That would mean, that’s not the solution, as with high voltage it switches off the same…
Specially ESS installations and other grid connected will suffer a lot from this as well…
In VE-config the maximum setting is 270V, so above, no inverter working…
I will now install a 4-pole 40A relay and an over/under-voltage switch to just switch the grid completely off above 250-255V (nor in VE-config, nor in the Cerbo you can program a relay to do that) to solve this temporarily or maybe permanent.
The grid supplier is notified, but, as usual, they are slower than…and nothing will be done about it, see below last half year in detail mode, EDP is the local supplier there.
I like your proposal, but I have 3 phase 8K quattros, and, such stabilizer hangs on the grid side, running then all day long, consuming a ton of money just on standby (1100-1500 euro a year), especially the bigger ones with servo motors for each phase separately, not worth the investment, just a relay and a 3-phase over-voltage switch will do for sure way better.
BTW, the one you show above will burn out or switch off also above 260V, better to change that advert, as Victron moderators do not like to show where you can buy things.
Do you have and/or experience these grid high voltages as well when you travel around in your mobile home?
I would of course be interested in the ‘speed’ of the regulation. What about an AVR with a short power dip? does the device also manage this … are there any data sheets or a manufacturer’s reference … can be deleted here because there is no PN function
I’ve seen such device…
It has inside an autotransformer with a few relays and a small electronic board with a PIC microcontroller.
Based on the input voltage, the relays switch to different connections of the transformer winding.
These chinese mini-regulators do more harm than good. They are not a solution for overvoltage grid faults. They do not work if you have 270V+, input voltage is max 260V. This will cry louder than the Multi’s - it will be like a chourus who can cry loudest
The solution is to have either an SPD or a digital voltage monitor relay which above 265V for example trips and reconnects when grid is back to normal. Set it under the overvoltage of your Victron setting and this way you avoid ending up in the dead-lock situation, Multi will just see it as a grid lost event, rather than grid over-voltage event.
I think the function of the transductor is perfect for voltage stabilisation … but in this design never for adapting to different input voltages.
A simple construction consisting of winding and capacitor without control cannot achieve this. Here I would have to constantly change the winding ratio in rapid repetition
The electronics in our illustration could account for this.
However, this ‘forgotten’ technology is interesting
