I’ve got a Quattro-II in a vehicle with a Lithium battery array and options for either mains or a generator to feed it. Mains is limited to 5A so I don’t trip the breaker meaning it recharges the batteries but very slowly.
My generator is rated to 5.5kW and the wiring is all rated to 32A, so I set the input current limit at 20A so it could quickly recharge my batteries and then turn off to save fuel.
Unfortunately, when the geni is running my load (running off the inverter) are constantly turning on and off. I’ve messed with the input current limit and below about 8A there is no issue.
This is the input power with the geni running. My loads are a constant ~300W.
1410 - 1430 is with an 8A input current limit working fine. 1430 - 1450 is with a 9A current limit. Each of the troughs at 9A coincides with a loss of power to my loads and everything having to reboot a few seconds later. This continues indefinitely.
The voltage and frequency provided by the generator both look fine to me:
Although I did have to disable UPS function to get the power to be accepted .
My first thought was that there was an issue with the generator but if I run some heaters directly off it I have no issues. I measured with a clamp meter and the geni is providing 12A very happily. It’s only if the load is going via the inverter that I have an issue.
Anyone have any similar issues? There’s nothing i can see on VEConfigure that might be relevent to this other than the input current limit.
I’m experiencing the exact same issue. When I bought my generator in 2021, I was able to set the AC input current limit to 21A without any problems, charging at nearly 4000W.
However, over the past two winters, the generator has been tripping frequently. Sometimes, it’s the generator’s 32A breaker that trips, and other times the Multiplus stops charging even though the generator is still producing 230V. After a few seconds, the charging resumes.
Following your previous post, I tried limiting the AC input current to 8A. This stopped the generator from tripping, and the Multiplus accepted the AC input without any issues.
Of course, this is not a proper solution, but at least you’re not alone!
I suspect that a firmware update for the Multiplus may have changed something in its internal settings, causing this issue. However, I can’t confirm without access to detailed Multiplus statistics.
My generator can provide 6000W effortlessly when powering heaters or other high-consumption devices directly. Maybe these devices don’t require as clean a signal as the Multiplus does?
Multi’s are designed to be ‘picky’, to protect loads from passthrough AC issues. But some parameters can be relaxed, and there may be other things at play too. Look through this… MultiPlus Generator FAQ [Victron Energy]
And there may be something else too. I’ve even seen dry joint in a generator power cord plug cause similar.
My batteries are also Pylontech. I’ve used US5000s and US3000s and seen no difference.
My original set up uses a Hyundai DHY6000SE and fw version 493 on the Quattro limited to 8A.
I’ve since set up a DHY8000SELR with a Multi RS 48/6000/100 and fw version 1.15 and have the same issue.
In this new case, the input current limit is about 16A (of the 20A it should be limited to) and the devices running off the MultiRS do not lose power when the charge is rejected - the input power just drops to 0 then ramps up again and cycles indefinitely.
I will check for dry-joints on the original installation but I’m sure there are none at my new site so don’t think this is the culprit.
I will test and report back:
The more powerful DHY8000 on my original installation and see if a higher input is accepted.
The Quattro on charger-only.
