I have received a campervan with the following installation.
Two lithuim batteries from the brand Bluggy - Pararell
Victron phoneix 12/2000VA inverter
Victron MPPT 75/15A
12V charger - unknown brand
3 x 25A DC-DC charger
Victron switch filax 2 - To switch between when are connected from 220V camping or select the inverter when we are not connected to the camping.
However I am missing some monitoring tool. I am a beginner and I have tried to read as much as possible So I was thinking to adding Cerbo GX, Touch 50. However as the 12V charger is not Victron, the DC-DC charger are not Victron and the batteries are not Victron, I understand I should add a smarthunt right? my question how many smarthunt I need for this set up¿
Mainly I want to see all the energy coming in: MPPT, 12V charger, DC-DC Charger, how much energy is leaving the batteries. Also the inverter status. Thank you for the help.
If you install a Victron Smart shunt directly on the negative terminal of the battery(set), you can monitor all the current going in and out of the batteries with the Victron app.
When you install a Cerbo GX, you need a Ve-Direct cable from the Smart Shunt, and from the Smart MPPT, to the Cerbo GX. And you can connect the Phoenix to the Cerbo GX also.
When all devices are wired to the Cerbo GX, they will automatically appear on the GX Touch screen, and/or on your VRM portal, when the Cerbo GX is connected to internet.
If you want to monitor charge current and load current seperately tjen you can use a SmartShunt and you configure it as a DC energy meter and then you can specify if it is a generic charger, generic load, solar charger, wind charger etc. You want full monitoring then you will need a shunt as the battery monitor, a shunt as the charge sources and a shunt as the loads, so 3 shunts. Find the Victron SmartShunt page and download the manual.
Hi, one stupid question (I m newbie). What is the difference between charge current and load current?
As I know the source of the current: MPPT (Victron), Phoneix invertir (Victron), DC charger (alternator’s van) and AC (Shore).
If I just add the smarthunt to the DC charger, cant we say if there is an incoming source is the Shore? example: AC (Shore) = Total - MPPT - DC Charger (smarthunt) - Phoneix inverter (Victron) and this show this Shore?
Understood. Just last question, because I got two different answers.
Do I need two smarthunt for monitoring the load and charge current? or just one? because the first answer mentioned that smarthunt can monitor the load and charge current with a single smarthunt. Thank you.
If you have 1 Smartshunt as a battery monitor connected to the battery it monitors what goes in and out of the battery so it measures the balance of charge and load but not individual values. Charge 50A, load 20A Smartshunt will indicate 30A Charge 50A, load 60A SmartShunt will indicate -10A. It does not tell you individual values but goves you key information. If you want to know charge or load values separately then you need 1 shunt for charge and 1 shunt for loads. This gets expensive for a small system.
As I am having some issues in the setup. The phoneix inverter is not working and it could be due the batteries (third party batteries) are not compatible with the inverter. The company who build the campervan is thinking to change my set up and put all victron.
1 x battery 320AH Victron.
2 x Orion XS DC-DC charger - 100AH in total
12V blue smart
2000V Phoneix inverter
MPPT Victron.
With this setup, I imagine I dont need any smarthunt right?
DC-DC Orion will connect directly to the Cerbo
12V blue smart will connect directly to the cerbo
Victron batteries will connect directly to the cerbo.
The company didnt specify the battery. Do you know if all the victron batteries can be used for this purpose or there is any specific model? so I can ask the van company to use the one specific (they are not used to work with Victron).