MPPT Controllers

Hi,

I live in South Africa and we have a huge problem with loadshedding, so I installated a MultiPlus II 5000, MPPT RS450, Cerbo GX and 3 Pylon US3000C.

Now I noticed when we have loadshedding during the day that my MPPT during the grid failure doesn't supply any power to the system.
The manual states that this is not implemented in ESS but you can misuse the generator option, unfortunately I can't find any info about how to do this.

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Best regards,

Cordy

Hello,

I urgently need help as my MPPT is going to blow my Batteries.

My MPPT is set to BMS controlled = NO.

How can this be changed? I've asked the shop I've bought it and they checked internally with some Victron colleagues and all refer me to this forum

Is there a way, even it means to send the MPPT to Victron.

But actually I hope that a setting in a commen menu (Cerbo GX) can be set back back.

Many thanks in advance.

Hello to everyone,

I have searched high and low for the correct SmartSolar 75/15 Mppt settings. I have 3 Walmart EverStart Deepcycle/starting batteries that I would like to keep charged while our boat is in storage. Thanks for your help.

In my van I have a 100W solar panel feeding a Victron MPPT 75/15 which feeds a 100A SOK lithium battery. Also wired to the same battery I have a Victron 12/12 30A DC DC isolated charge controller, not grounded to chasis, just wired + and - to my car battery.

I don't seem to ever have problems when the battery is lower and it's in bulk charge. Sometimes when the battery is near or in absorption stage, usually in full sun, and oftentimes right after starting up my engine which kicks on the charge controller I will hear my inverter beep every few seconds over and over and it will say HI, meaning high voltage. This also sometimes happens with the engine off in full sun. The Victron app will log spikes up around 17-18 volts. In the app it will show watts bouncing from the low digits to over 50W along with the beeps. If I turn my MPPT off the voltage spikes stop. This is always in full sun with no clouds.

3 screenshots of the same instance, zooming in

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another couple of instances

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The other issue I notice is that when my DC DC charger hits absorption the AMPs feeding my battery constantly fluctuate dramatically. This corresponds with my engine revving up and down at idle. If I turn the DC DC charger off the revving stops.

Could it be that I have both a bad MPPT charger and a bad DC to DC charger? the DC DC charger was purchased as being already opened box but the MPPT was new. I'm suspecting maybe it could have something to do with my SOK battery since I'm having issues with both charge controllers, but I'm hoping someone with more expertise could chime in and enlighten me. I have settings for both set to the standard lithium settings. Thanks for reading!

Good day,

Two solar chargers Smart MPPT 150/70-Tr and Smart MPPT 250/70-Tr don't charge the batteries under ESS mode. On VRM the system shows this:

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I have set the system to not sell any PV excess to grid. However if I set the system to sell the excess, controllers do start to charge and export PV excess to grid:

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Moreover, if we disconnect the VE.Direct cable from both controllers to Venus GX, they do charge battery bank but system doesn't run under ESS:

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Any clue of what could be wrong on configuration? I need to set the system up properly for ESS and I have compared all parameters with other systems I have installed that seems to run properly on ESS.

Thank you in advance for your help.

Hello, I will try to be precise. I have contacted my distributor of victron devices, and he has stopped selling, so I wonder if you could give me an indication here.

My system. Camper van, lifepo4 280ah 12v battery. 5 100W solar panels in parallel, mppt 100/50, orion 12/12, smartshunt, multiplus 12/1600/70 and CerboGx.

I would like to have the panels in series, but they can reach 116v and my charger is the 100/50. I can't fit another 100W plate to do series-parallel.

Since 9 days ago, my batteries have been discharging down to 20% (then I get the vrm warning). During the day the solar generates about 40-60W on average, before (even last summer, I had about 150-160wh).

Since a few days ago, the plates do not generate more than 40-60W, at some point of the day they can reach 150W (but only for a moment), then sometimes it goes down to 0W (lots of sun and no clouds).

I have checked all the connections and everything seems to be in order. I just need to check the mc4 connections of the solar panels, but it is quite inaccessible for maintenance and I would like to discard everything else first.

The battery is below 80% (I have done the tests with the SOC from 20% to 90%, same results.)

I have tried charging the battery from the alternator (Orion) it takes 18amps, and from the multiplus (takes 65amps) no problem. The battery is fine, and the cells are balanced.

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A few days ago (as always, fine)

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Just to add it, half of the time, the SCC is not giving any W as can be seen here (it never did it something like this, at least with the battery not full).

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Thank you for your time, I hope I can fix it..

Hi all, I have a Smart Solar 75/15. It was delivered with a jumper connected across what I think is the Tx Rx lines of the VE Direct port. I would like to add a lorawan transmitter. Is it ok to remove this jumper? Presumably I will have to to connect the transmitter?

Also, does anyone know if the lorawan transmitter is waterproof? Or, can the whole unit, including antenna be mounted indoors, i.e. within a shed?

Many thanks!

Hello,

is there reason why is daily history reset at 20:57 and not at 00:00?

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It is on and charging. It comes into view if i turn all power sources off and then on again. After a night it will still be on but not visible on the connect app. again. What is going on? How to rectify so i see it all the time. I dont want to be switching the whole system on and off each day just so i can see the solar history.

I spent the extra coin forost of my setup from Victron because, when I'm out boondocking in my RV, I want no issues as I'm many hours or days from home.

Thought I'd share an experience so that others might learn and avoid a very expensive mistake. If you're new to this stuff and just leaning, I think my story is worth a read because this mistake is costing me several thousand dollars to fix. Hope this story helps someone else avoid what I've incurred. Also, I'm hoping for some intelligent ideas (trolls and anyone with snarky comments should move on) to what could have gone wrong so that this could have been avoided and never happen to me again.

About a month ago I finished installing my 4 Newpowa 210W PV in series and my 4 Lion UT1300 12V 105Ah LiFePO4 in parallel. My charger is a Victron MPPT SmartSolar 150/70 (yes oversized but wanted room for expansion later) with the LED display module.

Batteries connected through the Victron Lynx PowerIn with the controller all sharing the same bus. 25A 300V breaker installed between the PV and controller.

I installed the Victron Connect on my smartphone and paired it with the controller and allowed it to install a software update. Seemed reasonable.

I finished installing late one evening as sun was nearly set and could see very low voltage coming from the PV which I expected. The charge controller was reading 13.3 V from batteries. All good. I hooked up the coach feed to PowerIn and all was well. Generator could start in case I would need to run A/C for the weekend some. Plans were to install 3K inverter after this trip. Flipped the breaker to disconnect PV and headed in for the night.

Next day we departed for our trip. We get to destination and I unhitch and get ready to level. I flipped the breaker on and went about completing my other arrival activities. Then I smell electrical burning. This happened in just a couple minutes.

I opened up the front compartment where all my gear is and I see smoke coming out of the front of the front slide controller. The leads coming into on the right side are arching. I flipped the PV breaker and quickly disconnected the coach 12V from the PowerIn. What happened?!?!?

I followed the manual on the install of everything to the tee. Made sure batteries where connected to controller before the PV was. Upon investigation there were 12V fuses blown in coach panel. We replaced and they blew immediately. Fridge was off line. Front slide wasn't going to move. Determined that my weekend was shot. We headed back towards home.

Next day I visited a recommended repair shop of a good friend. I needed at least to move out the main slide so that I could open and empty the fridge. While still cool, I ended up throwing out most of the items that just weren't worth talking the risk and getting sick due up possible spoiling.

The RV tech looked at my situation. We flipped on the PV breaker - 72V coming across the batteries. Quickly flipped that off. How could that be? The controller is designed to auto sense the battery voltage. Upon initial connection it was showing 13.3V on the LED panel - about what I'd expect from nearly fully charged batteries under no load. So this makes no sense. Upon further investigation while I had it home waiting for the RV guy to get into his schedule, I look again at the VC app one evening. I'm looking at settings.....

BATTERY VOLTAGE WAS SET TO 48V?!?!? What the heck?!?? This controller auto detects the voltage! I saw it read 13.3. It's BRAND NEW for Pete's sake!!!

I'm dumbfounded and looking for answers. Did I FOUL THIS UP??? I'm no licensed electrician, but I've worked with electricity since I was old enough to put a house key into a120VAC outlet at 3 years of age. I took electronics in school. Took EE courses in college. I'm a licensed General Ham amateur radio operator and I did all the electrical study for that so that I knew it down pat. And I thoroughly planned out this system and vetted with others who I respect.

Here is where I am now. The smoking (bedsides the slide controller and about 8 other boards) gun is the 48V setting in the controller and I did not set it manually. In all my pondering, I have surmised that one of two things went wrong for that to not be set to 12V.

First possibility is that the software in the controller had a bug in it. Perhaps the update didn't go just right. Possible, but not as probable. Second possibility is that my controller was not as brand new as I thought it to be. I purchased through Amazon. The box looked new and everything looked factory fresh.

Studying the manual further I found out that the auto detection of battery voltage happens on first connection and remembers that until the voltage is later detected to be below 7V. My batteries where above 13V. My deduction at this point is that someone installed or setup this controller before me, connecting it to a 48V source. Then packagedmitbback all neat and pretty. And since my batteries were above 7V, it kept the 48V setting.

Nothing was wrong until I flipped the PV breaker on in full daylight. The RV tech looked at the aftermath and was reading 72 V. I would think that the controller would have been at most about 56V (14.4 *4). The OCV of each of my panels is about 20V, delivering 80V max while in series. Fortunately the batteries are smart enough that they went offline or I'd have a few more thousands in damage.

I'm interested in any ideas or to confirm my suspicions. I'm now contemplating a voltage regulator to the batteries and to the coach to prevent anything beyond 12.8V going in but the tech says that's not needed.

Hope this helps and I can ease my mind as to where I might have gone wrong or didn't. I can accept the blame, but I'd love to learn from this as it's a costly mistake somewhere. And despite the pain I'm feeling, like women and childbirth, I'll probably do this on my own again with the next rig. Thanks in advance. Hope this story makes for some learning for all.

I'm running a Multiplus-II 2x120, SmartSolar MPPT, Cerbo GX, and a new pair of Ampere Time 200Ah batteries with built-in BMS. I had been running three 100Ah Battle Born batteries before and saw something similar.

Today is the second day with the new batteries, so I specifically set the ESS parameters to fully charge the batteries. Exactly as the batteries reached the default absorption voltage of 14.2, the system "crashed" flashing the Overload and Low Battery LEDs. This happened yesterday morning as well when I was first starting the system after the batteries were fully charged using an external charger. I should add that there has been abundant sunshine and solar power both days and the SmartSolar was delivering significant power.

My theory is the batteries reach the threshold to switch into absorption and the system -- not sure which part -- creates a brief voltage spike (I've seen it over 15 volts using a meter) when switching into absorption. The battery's built-in BMS detects the excess voltage and disconnects resulting in 1) the low voltage warning in the log (resolved in 3 seconds) followed by 2) the DC ripple shutdown.

My question, assuming the system voltage spike is indeed the primary cause of and can't be eliminated, is how best to prevent this in the future. I'm running an ESS Mode 2 program, so I can program the system to not fully charge the batteries, but it just seems like there should be a better solution.

Suggestions?

TIA

Jim

Just curious because from the positive output terminal of the 150/35 charge controller, I'm getting 300-600 ohms, and on the negative terminal I get 0 ohms. Should it be 0?

I tried to find an answer in the forum after reading the documentation. But no headline/topic seams to answer my question.
If my generator isn't connected to the MPPT 250/100 I can measure 79V. So this is more than 53V and it should load the battery.
When I connect the generator cables (polarity is checked) to the MPPT, I can only messure 49.1V at the PV screws.
The same value is shown at the Battery screws.
Bulk is flashing slowly. The MPPT is cool.

The US3000C wild not be charged.

Please can you help me to solve that problem?

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My MPPT purchased on Amazon is failing and is still under warranty but past the standard return period.

The seller isn't responding to my attempts to contact them using the Amazon tool.

What do I do to resolve my warranty issue?

DVCC questions

I’m designing an external BMS for a Victron Smart Li battery. I’m incorporating a SmartSolar MPPT 100/50 for charging the battery, and a Cerbo GX to monitor that device and others. I know I can use a Cyrix Li to enable the BMS to disconnect the charger if necessary, but I’m reluctant to do that because it’s my understanding that disconnecting a battery from a charger, while it’s charging, can damage the charger. A better scenario would be to turn off the charger if required and I know that I can use the single VE.Direct connector with a VE.Direct non inverting remote on/off cable to do that, but then I am unable to connect the MPPT to a Cerbo GX.

So here are my two questions…

1. Is the SmartSolar MPPT 100/50 “DVCC capable”? Can a Lynx Smart BMS (or a VE.Bus BMS) turn off the charging current of the MPPT 100/50 if both devices are connected to a Cerbo GX with DVCC enabled? The MPPT 100/50 manual makes no mention of DVCC that I can find, but the GX Device manual states that DVCC can be used to control VE.Direct MPPTs with firmware v1.46, or beyond.
2. If this is possible, can I still use the Cerbo GX to monitor other VE.Direct devices that are connected to it? The GX manual states that “Enabling DVCC changes a GX device from a passive monitor into an active controller”. Is this an either or feature? If the GX device is changed into an active controller is it no longer able to monitor other devices as well”. I would think it would still have that capability, but would like confirmation.

Thank you