I noticed yesterday and also today something strange in the behaviour of my Multiplus II GX.
It goes to the “idle” mode iso charging or discharging.
I’m running my Multiplus in ESS to compensate for my energy in/out of the Grid.
Yesterday instead of delivering energy it was just “idle”; from 13:27 - 14:48 (so a bit more than one hour) .
And today the sun is fully shining so the Victron charged my battery, but after a while stopped from 12:32 till 14:42 (so more than 2 hours). And now it is back charging the battery again.
Is there a method to find back (a log file or so) what made the Victron converter decide to go into “idle”?
“Idle” is the text inside the picture of the Victron converter on the VRM-portal.
My solar panels are connected via the Grid so they worked normally.
And my battery was around 75% today (and yesterday when it stopped working it was around 70%).
It just seems to be the converter is not doing anything during that time. I see the power per phase in the VRM portal being updated regular (so it at least is able to readout the energy meter and update the VRM portal with data).
If I understand your answer correctly when the word “idle” is stated it refers to the state of BMS.
Other words like “Off” refer to the state of the Victron itself.
As my BMS was not idle during that moment, it might mean I have a problem with the communication between the victron and the BMS. So something I need to check next time it occurs.
In this case it sounds like you are on the right track. I naturally assumed you had a battery with no comms to the system when you mentioned the idle status on the victron inverter icon.
While it seems all normal last week, I changed this morning the communication cable and restarted the Victron.
Is there somewhere an overview of the different states the VRM-portal can show in the symbol of the Victron?
For example I have seen the following states last week:
“Sched Charge” (BMS: “Charging”)
“Sched Charge” (BMS state: “idle”)
“External Control” (BMS state: “Charging”)
“External Control” (BMS state: “Discharging”)
“Sustain” (BMS state: “Idle”)
“Discharging” (BMS state: “Discharging”)
“Off” (BMS state: “Discharging”)
As far as I understand:
“sched charge” only occurs during the hours I planned a schedule charge
“external control” happen when the ESS is running but there is not scheduled charge
“Off” is there when the converter is turned of from within the VRM portal.
But what about “sustain” and “discharging” how are they determined?
And also the last one. If I put the converter in “off”, why is the BMS still “discharging”
Also today I noticed that the Victron Multiplus jumped to “sustain” and the battery to “idle”, while I was hoping it was delivering energy to my house. See the screenshot of the VRM portal.
The SoC is set to 25% so 55% should be enough
And also the temperature limit UTP and UTPR are below the 4 degrees of the cells.
System is set to ESS.
Hi,
i have no idea why it goes idle. I came here because I have the same problem you had a couple of weeks ago. My system oscillates charge-discharge cycles. Did you fix this problem?
I saw your post before but i dont think it applies to me. My JK BMS is connected to the Cerbo and it says that both Mppts and the MPII are remote controlled by the bms. So communication is unlikely to be the issue.
The oscillation is at around 1-2 seconds sometimes more like 4-5 seconds. As I have a EM24 I can see power changes in less than a second while the oscillation is happening, so it’s not a meter issue, I think.
Battery “save mode” shouldn’t be the problem. It’s a feature that increases the Min SOC over time every time your battery isn’t fully charged at the end of day (in steps of 10% or so). I have it disabled but tried it before.
Yesterday and today the battery stopped again delivering energy and the VRM-portal showed again “sustain” in the Victron logo-box.
I also see it back in the “remote console” → Mode = On, State = sustain.
On the Victron inverter is the message “low battery”.
When I opened the remote console I noticed that it reports there is a warning “low battery voltage”, which is strange as the state of charge is 56%. See screenshots.
My conclusion today: somewhere the Victron has a setting of a “battery voltage level”, that is incorrect.
Now when I read it back I believe it is caused by a different issue:
if you see the battery voltage of 51.34V in the pictures above, and I compare this to the numbers I found here: https://community.home-assistant.io/t/solar-batteries-how-do-you-calculate-soc-voltage-in-percent/563919
It means the SOC should be in the order of 20%. And that is what I put exactly in Victron as limit.
So the question for me now becomes: why does he calculate 56% SOC iso 20%?
