My name is Peter. I have a property in Tenerife that has no street electricity connection (off grid). I have 17 solar panels and victron equipment, sunnyboy SMA and 6 pylontech batteries. I have had my system for 3 years now but recently had a storm that caused my system to go black/down. As my original technician was sick, I had to call another installer to replace my broken panels and get my system up and running again. I have since found out that the two technicians have ego issues with each other and I have lost faith in them both. My system is running now 17 panels and 6 x 3000w pylontech batteries yet I am only producing around 2000/2500w in pure sun. I believe my programación can be setup to be more optimal. I think I am only using half the panels to collect sun. I am looking for a professional that can assist me in the programming of my system. It can be remotely if needed via VRM.
With 17 panels at approx 350w/400w we should be producing close to 6000w. My property is rented and I live in Italy. I am looking for some assistance in optimising my system. My wife had a long talk with our original installer today and he has an ego problem and won’t talk with me and refuses to change any settings saying that the system can’t handle all 17 panels. He makes a lot of contradictions, I believe he is angry that we used another installer when we had problems (which we were forced too as our original guy was having chemo) My Spanish isn’t perfect so I don’t always understand him.
I’m not an expert by any means… but if everything is working except the PV output is lower than expected, I would start looking at the PV panels first. My guess is that some of them aren’t working or their diodes are fried.
What do you mean by storm exactly? Just wind? Or also lightning?
If PV is AC connected only via SMA and not with Victron Solar Charge Controllers, there is not much a Victron Expert can do or see in VRM.
You need to adhere to the 1:1 solar capacity to inverter capacity rule at least…
If you want to give us a call, you can find us on the Victron website in the section “where to buy”. Just enter VicTech.
I had a talk with my installer, he had it setup in two groups of panels. One via the mppt 250/100 and the other via the SMA but for some reason only had the SMA group turned on, hence the low production numbers. He has now switched both groups on and we are getting over 6500w on sunny moments. The issue now is that by 2pm the batteries are full and our voltage is over 53. The pylontech battery spec has a max of 53,5 voltage. Is there a way that this could be setup to limit the max amount of voltage to say 52,5?
Not sure if you have setup or using ESS assistant but if you check this link it will give you and/or your installer a guideline hiw to setup Pylontechs.
Hello, thank you for the reply. I have read the pylontech battery sheet. I am by no means a technician, I am just a buyer/user who is concerned about max voltage overload. If I read it correctly, it’s possible to limit the max voltage charge to a set number. At times now as my battery gets close to full, it goes to 53,5 for a moment. I just want to be careful and not cause any damage to any parts and if it’s possible to restrict the max voltage to say 52,5 then this would be ideal.
The correct charge battery voltage is in a well setup Pylontech environment is governed by the DVCC function ( Distributed Voltage & Current Control ).
Max charge is provided by the Pylontech BMS which is overridden by Victron in the software. So if this is your case, you are good.
Victron writes following in the earlier shared Pylontech setup guidelines :
When DVCC is enabled, the battery (via the CAN-bms) is responsible for the charge voltage. The Pylontech battery requests a charge voltage of 53.2V. We have however found that in practice this is too high.
The Pylontech battery has 15 cells in series, so 53.2V equates to 3.55V per cell. This is very highly charged and makes the system prone to go overvoltage.
It should also be noted that a LiFePO4 cell stores very little additional energy above 3.45V.
For this reason we opted to override the BMS and cap the voltage at 52.4V. This sacrifices almost none of the capacity and greatly improves the stability of the system.
If you want to lower the max charge to F.I. 52.2V,… you need to override it in the DVCC settings.
Hello. Thanks for the reply. Is this something I can check via the VRM or do I have to be onsite? I haven’t changed any settings before with this equipment.
Via VRM and if you have Admin access you can open the console.
Or when on site you can open the console/cerbo via your local network by typing its IP address.
( provided both not blocked by your installer )
Hello, thanks again for the info. I have full admin access to the system and I have seen that the voltage max is still set at 53.2, however at times I receive emails about overcharging above this number, at least twice a day. I have had a look around via the VRM, however with my lack of experience in these technical things and am apprehensive to make any official changes. This is so crazy that I can’t just request from my installer to set this 52.5 max. He is quite difficult and it took a lot for him to give me use of all the panels. Now asking him to change a setting again he will rip my head off. Is there a guide or diagram of how I could adjust this max voltage or if you have my login details that we could solve it? Thanks.
Pylontec batteries actually request from the system the 53.2v if it has comms to the system. You can check this in the menu under the pylontec and parameters.
What is important is the ve bus base programming is correct (52 and 51v with communication from the battery to the GX). That can only be checked with ve config. And the guide linked by
You can for a period of time cap the charged voltage in DVCC on the GX but i do not recommend doing it for long periods it causes problems for the pylontecs.
There may be another option. I have done this elsewhere for a different reason. I lowered the charge voltage on the Victron MPPT Controller itself. When you go onto VRM you should be able to see the inverter/GX and the Victron 250/100 MPPT Controller. Click on the icon and you should see the current voltaGE CURRENT pOWER ETC. tOP RIGHT HAND CORNER IS A SETUP COG like the M$ Windows one (oops caps lock) . Click on it and select Battery. Check it’s set to 52.2v or 52.5v (needs a password usually) … Can’t help with SMA as I am Victron spoilt…
If the batteries send min/max cell voltages and you are are on a current GX version, the new pylon-specific charge algo should prevent any high voltage issues. Inverter/charger voltage settings are ignored when under BMS control, so that won’t help.
You can only override it with the DVCC option for max charge voltage.
Changing the mppts without programming the inverters wont change a thing anyway. They follow the ve bus charge set point voltage if the batteries aren’t overriding it.
Assuming you are using ESS.
