Sometime ago, i did something (i don’t know what) that made the status of my batteries beeing displayed as “getting empty” until they were shown as “empty” on the dashboard. However, today i was onsite and found the batteries own status lights are showing almost full batteries. What might be causing this?
Any suggestions?
Thomas Wölfer
@twoelfer Where do the system get the SOC reading from and what hardware do you have?
The battery can have false triggers with those lights. Many brands have an issue like that.
What is more important is what voltage they are at.
What are you using for the state of charge on the vrm? The batteries through can or a shunt or just the inverters themselves?
Here is what i have:
Victron SmartSolar 250/60
Victron MultiPlus-II GX 48/3000
2 Pylontech US5000 LFP Batteries with 48V
Every single battery has it’s own BMS. Batteries and Victron are connected via CAN.
Currently the Victron reports 0% Battery, but the Voltage is 49.6V.
Well the dashboard used to show a status that would fit the battery status lights. Right now, the dashboard says “empty” (which is funny because the batteries also run the router that is used to send over the data for that dashboard.) while quite obviously there is enery available. So it seems to me this is an issue with the victron, not the battery lights.
Are the batteries actually communicating with the gx? You said you had possibly changed some settings so it is likely a sut up issue.
Are they set as the battery monitor in system set up?
Go through the Remote Console on the GX to make sure the SoC is taken from the batteries’ BMS
And, by the way, 49.6V is kind of on the low side. Very low. Like, empty.
I will drive there on sunday and take a look. i can not connect to the remote console. Soon as i leave the wifi network the victron is in, the console becomes unaccessible… (any ideas what might be causing this.)
According to this thread ( https://powerforum.co.za/topic/4925-best-charge-settings-for-pylontech/) with 49.6 we there should be quite a bit more than 1% OC… shouldn’t it?
Also, if SoC wasn’t taken from the batteries - why would the victron “dream up” the data it does in the way it does it? Any ideas?
An also: Looking at the graph for the last couple if weeks: There has been consistenly more solar input than usage: Why would the batteries drain in the first place? The graph clearly shows, more energy coming in than going out (though i am kinda suprised “more” is coming in at all - where would it go?)
I will drive there and look this up in sunday. (it’s an 1.5 hour drive, so i can’t just walk over and look it up. For some reason, i also cannot connect to the remote console… so no other way than driving there. )
@twoelfer Also worth checking whether VRM is correctly configured for remote access and whether the router it blocking external access to the Cerbo as it will make life a lot simpler.
Yes. I would very much like to have remote console access. Treid everything from the docs. I assume it must be some kind of firewall in the router. I will check this on sunday.
Hi @twoelfer
This is your problem.
The MultiPlus-II GX only has a single CAN interface, and it can only communicate either via VE.Can (250 kbit/s) or BMS-Can (500 kbit/s) at the same time.
There are two physical ports, to allow daisy chain of devices, but underneath it’s only 1 interface.
This means you cannot have both Victron MPPT and Pylontech BMS connected at the same time via CAN for that MultiPlus-II GX product.
The solution is to use the VE.Direct connector of the MPPT and connect that to the VE.Direct port of the MultiPlus-II GX instead of the VE.Can connection.
This will then free up the CAN interface. You will need to make a software change as well in the GX device settings, to use the 500 kbit/s BMS-Can protocol instead of the 250 kbit/s VE.Can one that is currently selected - more info on that in the Pylontech Victron BMS integration guide here - Victron & Pylontech UP2500, US2000, US3000, US2000C, US3000C, US5000, US5000B, UF5000, Pelio-L, UP5000, Phantom-S, Force-L1 & L2 [Victron Energy]
Once the hardware change to VE.Direct, and software change to BMS-Can is done, then your battery will correctly report its state of charge.
The SOC you saw before was a synthetic one calculated by the MultiPlus-II GX - but it is not in sync with the battery, and you need to get the Pylontech battery properly connected and communicating for other reasons as well.
You can confirm this is working when you see the Pylontech listed in the device list of the GX device and on VRM.
There are battery types, specifically lead acid batteries that don’t have their own State of Charge readings.
There are some limited applications where using a software algorithm to estimate the State of Charge based on the power flowing in and out of the MultiPlus is sufficiently useful. It’s also useful for some features of the MultiPlus for it to know the State of Charge of the batteries (such as activating relays to start a generator).
In your situation this software state of charge estimate is not suitable, and has only obscured a bigger issue that your battery is not communicating with your GX.
Well without me doing anything, yesterday this happened. (I haven’t done anything yet. i will drive there tomorrow.)
So i understand this correctly: When the pylontechs are connected correctly, they shoud show up in the device list on the dashboard?
Yes you need to make sure the Pylontech are showing up in the VRM device list .
The SOC is not a good indicator of things going well.
There are certain voltage conditions that will reset the built in SOC of the MultiPlus - this is normal and good, but in your situation you need those batteries to be communicating with your system (for things beyond just SOC)
Remember to get your hands on a VE.direct cable that is long enough to reach from the MPPT to the MultiPlus-II GX before you visit the site
oh. Is this some Special Kind of cable?
Just do some basic homework, or ask a couple of AI assistants. Everything is well documented on the Victron manuals.
Ok, Thank you.
So things are looking good right now. It turns out, all the cables were correctly in place. However this comment about the 500 kbit made me look deeper into the settings and as soon as i changed this to the BMS-Can protocol, the Pylontechs showed up in the device list. So communication with the batteries is now working well and the “new” status is actually the old one, before the degradation. The batteries are almost 90% full.
Also, digging into the settings brought me to a notification about a possible firmware update for the GX (later i checked all other devices and updated them). Soon as this was installed the remote console was accessible over the internet. (so basically, i can now check and change all settings without having to driver over there which is a very good thin.).
Thanks alot for the pointers 
