Solar system is set up to work whether the grid is on or off. We actually have a three-way switch to move between grid power and solar power because the grid here isn’t consistent enough to have a fully on/off grid. Transformer is far away. Voltage isn’t consistent.
Suddenly our solar system is only working if the grid is turned on, and it was not built that way.
There were no hardware/wiring changes, and there were no firmware updates.
I have posted in many Facebook and Reddit groups. And I have scoured the internet including this forum to no avail.
Battery health is good, charging is good, and the house still draws off the panels and battery. However, if we have a grid shutdown (which happens often) our Victron system will shut down. Needless to say that defeats the purpose.
We get a “grid lost” notification every couple minutes in the VRM portal. Yet it requires the grid to be on for the system to work even though it’s drawing from the batteries. Sorry if I’ve reiterated myself endlessly. I am trying to make it very clear what’s happening.
Our supplier wants to charge us a lot more money than we have to come and diagnose. And since the hardware is not damaged, it seems to me. It’s an issue that can be figured out even if by VE config.
Yes. It points to a bad battery.
Things do change by ageing - an inconvenient fact of life. AGM and three years used in the same sentence usually equals dead battery.
That screen shot is daytime with lots of cloud cover. This one is today’s around the same time with a cloudy day, but not as much. When it’s full Sun it’s usually 14-15.5v The batteries are discharging normally. They don’t seem to have a shorter life with my usage than before.
I read that a fully charged and rested battery should be around 12.6v. Here it is with more Sun. I’m getting the same amount of dm daily usage out of the batteries as before
It’s not actually taking any power from the grid at all. I’ve been watching my meter for the past 10 days and I keep getting the “grid lost“ alarm. I asked my provider to give me admin for VRM because I wanted to see the ESS, however, when I open it, it says ESS assistant is not installed. Even though he says they did install it. Do you think I can request to them to send me the original VE config file? or ask them to upload the original VE config file themselves? I downloaded the VE config file via remote VEconfig and it comes up as blank.
@CDVG
There’s something wrong. You can also check the ESS status in the GX, it looks like this if it’s not there…
If your ‘provider’ has the Admin rights then by all means ask him why. (And what he’s fouled up.)
That alarm you get is possibly LOM at work, usually enabled in an ESS setup. Some explanation here… VEConfigure: grid codes & loss of mains detection [Victron Energy]
A side issue… Your batteries are probably ok, but whatever’s generating that SOC isn’t. Ignore it until you sort it. AGM batts that can accept that sort of current aren’t anywhere near full.
