Hello
I am using NodeRed to control most of the behavior of Multiplus 2 GX 5000 (due to some specificities of my grid subscription & willingness to control the system behavior at best).
My system is connected to grid. ESS is in optimized without batterylife.
During the day, in certain circumstances, I would like to have the solar to feed my loads at first, with support of the utility if needed.
Basically, I would like to reproduce the mode “loads source priority” SBU (solar/utility/battery), found on many Chinese inverter (including my previous Voltronic), and the solar feed mode LBU (load/battery/utility)
Unfortunately, setting the inverter to “ON” mode leads to a SBU (solar/battery/utility) / BLU (battery/load/utility) type of behavior to feed the loads & use the solar production - which is not what I want.
In Nodered I tried to use the Max Charge Power setting (putting it to 0W), but this does not seem to have any impact (I assume this is for AC charge only).
I found a trick in Nodered, which is to periodically set the inverter limit setting to the current solar production… but I am not really happy with this way of doing (anyhow, it works).
Any clue on how I could achieve this another way ?
Thanks
I run ESS optimized without battery life.
I wrote a Python script to do what you did in NodeRED, dynamically adjusting the inverter power limit to match the incoming PV power. It works, but I don’t use that anymore.
I think i’m hearing that you don’t want the battery to be used.
One thing I did for a while was have my whole day running in scheduled charge mode (except for one minute because you can’t specify 24:00 duration).
This means that the ESS Min SoC setting is effectively unused.
During the day, you can add a scheduled charging so that above the SoC specified in the schedule, it only uses PV power (self-consumption above limit) which is what you want. And as the battery slowly discharges, it will occasionally recharge it when it drops 5% below SoC. The scheduled charge windows are matched in order (1-5), first one wins, so I put the daytime before the catchall schedule for the day last.
I don’t use that approach anymore either, because quick access to the setting for min SoC is more useful to me than having to edit a schedule (just convenience).
Finally, the normal ESS behavior when at the min SoC is to charge the battery through PV until it is 3% above the min SoC. Then the PV and battery both are used to drive the loads.
Which is not what you want. And if the loads exceed the PV, the SoC sawtooths back and forth between charging batteries with PV and driving the loads. I also find this behavior annoying, but that’s what it does.
Hi
Thanks for your comprehensive feedback 
All my node red flows are managing the inverter mode (either on or inverter only) and force charge battery
if needed (depends on several parameters) from grid. Fully automated.
As a matter of fact, I do not need to modify by hand the soc - so reading you, I should stick to my node red inverter limit = solar production as nothing better seems to exist
Matt
OK, I agree, running in Inverter only mode, that is pretty much all you can do.
If I come across anything better I’ll let you know.
Back to your original point: Other AiOs do SBU/SUB, etc. Which also don’t always do what people want, but there are lots of them out there.
It would be nice if Victron would put out a migration guide for people who want to upgrade to Victron and are accustomed to the SBU/SUB/etc. modes. At least with Victron it can be programmed, as you are doing.