charging

Hi everyone,

I have a new install with Victron 12v 150ah smart lithium batteries along with an IP44 charger.

I am using the victron mini bms to control the charge disconnect remote port on the IP44.

Question is " in the Skylla IP44 setting there is a spot where you select BMS present- Y or N."

Do I select yes or no. Or is this only for CAN connected devices

thanks

Ed

Hi Look for help from some experts

I have installed an off grid system with multiplus inverter , smart solar charger , Venus controller with 5 Kva avr backup generator with 10kva lithium batteries. All lights etc low voltage.

The gennie is a 5kva AVR 240 v autostart connected to the venus for remote start stop

The system has been running fine on solar all summer. Finally connected the generator to auto run as winter is approaching, with less sunlight and build nearly completed

I have a few issues that are beyond my knowledge.

When the generator was first connected it wouldn’t run, so I read this forum and changed a few settings to get it to accept . It now charges etc.

The problems I have are.

1. When the generator is running, the dimmer lights flicker badly.

2. Range Cooker which is apparently voltage sensitive cuts out the oven when on genie

3. When running on genie the multiplus is very noisy, loud buzzing enough to keep you awake

4. Is it possible to get more charging power out of the genie so as not to waste the potential input.

5. when genie not in use there is sometimes some background noise but nothing as bad as when genie running.

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Hello,

We are working on a project to charge/discharge a battery by using a PLC. We have seen that the Venus GX supports Modbus tcp/ip but it is not clear to us whether it is possible to control the controller via this protocol. Here we think of for example:

- Charging the battery

- Discharging the battery

- Charging speed of the battery

- Battery Discharge Rate

So we want to get the intelligence out of the controller and control it from the PLC. Is this possible?

Thanks in advance for your efforts!

I've got a 50/100 charge controller on my camper, 2 100 watt panels, and a single 100ah battleborn battery.

I recently had my camper in to get my radio wired into both the engine battery and camper battery with a switch between. I realized they only hooked it up to the camper battery when the battery completely died. I tried to charge it with my shore power hookup. I think since the battery was dead, something wasnt recognizing a battery being there and it wouldnt charge it.

I then unhooked everything from the battery, and jumped it from the engine battery. hooked everything back up, and was able to charge it through shore power from there, and everything functioned normally.

Im wondering if when hooking everything back up i blew a fuse in the charge controller itself? my other thought was that I might have blown one of the inline fuses coming from the panels, though I've got a 20a fuse between my battery and charge controller, Id be surprised if it was the solar panel inline fuses.

I havent been able to check them because the renogy mounts make it an absolute pain to reach the bolts. Otherwise I'd have to remove the mounts from the roof itself which means a lot of disassembly to access those mount bolts, which i'd really like to avoid.

Does this sound like a problem with the charge controller itself? any other Ideas?

Also, will I need to fit the romote on/off switch? Can't it just stay on all the time?

Thanks very much!

My Multiplus switches between charging state prematurely. It will change from bulk to absorption between 85% and 88% (SOC), but I have the bulk state set at 90% (SOC) (see image 1 below). From absorption to float between 90% to 95% (SOC) (see image 2 below). I always thought the float state would be 2 amps or less. Can someone tell what is going?

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Hello, I have a mppt 75/15 charge controller with 200 watts of panels on it right now. I know that is the max but read somewhere that you could add more panels but it would only pass the 200 watts at peak sun without damaging the controller. My problem is where I put the current panels is now not in direct sun so I would like to add two more 100 watt panels in parallel so I can try to get some more wattage during cloudy days and place these panels on the roof where the sun is shining now. There are alot of trees around the building. Any info is greatly appreciated.

I have a pair of Lifeline AGM batteries that I want to equalize/condition, as they’ve been sitting unused for a while. Lifeline recommends doing this periodically, as follows:

“First go through the normal charge cycle to bring the battery to full charge. The conditioning charge should then be applied by charging for 8 hours. At 77°F (25°C), the conditioning voltage should be set at 2.58 VPC (15.5 volts for a 12 volt battery).”

(There follows a temperature compensation chart. At my ambient temperature, 15.6 V is what they recommend.)

The gist of my problem is this: I have been unable to get my 75/15 to put out anywhere near 15.6 V in equalization mode, or to equalize for more than an hour at a time, regardless of what settings I choose in the VictronConnect app. I’ve read and reread the 75/15 manual, but it doesn’t cover manual equalization, or any of the “Expert Mode” settings available in the Victron app.

Here’s my hardware setup:

* Two 100 W solar panels, tilted and aimed at the sun, under clear Arizona skies. They’re connected in series and are putting out more than 40 V. From past experience I know I can get at least 180 watts from them under these conditions.

* Victron 75/15 solar controller (firmware v1.42), with settings controlled by the VictronConnect app (v5.11) running on an iPhone (iOS 13.1.3).

* Two Lifeline GPL-6CT batteries connected in series, for 300 amp-hours at 12 V.

Again, my goal is 15.6 V for 8 hours, as the battery manufacturer recommends. So I go into the VictronConnect app’s battery settings. I choose “Expert Mode.” I set the equalization voltage to 15.6 V. I set the equalization stop mode to “fixed”, and the equalization duration to 8 hours. I tap the button to start manual equalization. That’s where things go wrong.

First I get a warning that equalization will be limited to 1 hour. And indeed it is: regardless of settings, I have to manually restart the process every hour. What happened to my 8-hour fixed time setting?

Worse, the controller never puts out more than 15.2 volts, despite the fact that I set it to provide 15.6 V in equalization mode. It has plenty of power available from the panels, but is only drawing 19 watts. 15.2 V is obviously not enough to do the job, per Lifeline’s recommendations.

What am I missing here? Why can’t I get the 75/15 to do what its settings say it will do? Any help will be much appreciated.

I have the Blue energy 100 / 50 controller. Controller stays in bulk mode even in bright sunshine and does not enter absorption mode even when the batteries are low. any thoughts as to why it would do this?

We have a battery pack (2x 12V 110 AH PbCa) for Engines and a second battery pack (2x 12V 110 AH PbCa) for service on our motor boat (34").
All our circuits (engine start, lights, electronics...) are in 12V.

We plan to install two 115 W Blue solar panels on the roof to maintain batteries fully charged when we are not on board (if we are on board, the batteries are charged by the engines).

Our shipping area is from Britanny and Scotland, with a quite low solar illumination (!)

What is the optimal solution ?

- Use of two separate MMPT regulators (and 1 solar panel / regulator / battery pack) ?
- Use of Blue solar PWM DUO charger (and the solar panels in serial or parallel) ?

- Another more optimal solution ?

Thanks for yr help and your experience.

Regards

Hi all

So lately I've noticed while my batteries are recharging in the morning that SOC jumps from 82% to 99% pretty much instantly.

BYD B-Box 10.25 v4.22 firmware

SmartSolar Charger MPPT 250/60 v1.39 MultiPlus 48/5000/70-100 v433 CCGX v2.33

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This has happened the last 3 days in a row...

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Any ideas why this may be the case?

Thanks!

I want to use the LIPO Batterie . It has a SIMP-BMS what I can connect to the Multiplus.

How can the Multiplus send the correct charging parameter to the MPPT 150/35?

Hi,
Setup is a Century Marine flooded lead acid under the bonnet of my 4wd, charged by a Redarc BCDC 1225D. I am working on the assumption that the redarc knows what its doing and when its showing greater than 13.6v and or 3 amps going into the battery, the battery is not full.
When using the default settings for Peukert and charge efficiency, soc is indicating that the battery is full whilst i am still seeing 10+ amps going into the battery so i know its nowhere near full.

The general advice from victron suggests that doing a sync will help ensure the accuracy, but it seems that unless the soc drops to below i think its 60% then a sync will not occur. The problem with that is the soc from day to day doesn't go below an indicated 85%.
The only usual thing running is the 12v 47l fridge.

Is the 712 behaving as usual, or should i be tweaking the Puekert and charge efficiency figures?

Question as above. Does any amount of charging count as one cycle?

IE if you charged from 60% to 90% would that count as one cycle?

Or is a cycle only counted when you fully charge the battery to 100%

For instance yesterday my 300ah 24 v bank was at 56% so I ran the genset which charged at @149amps

The skylla tg cut out when the battery voltage reached 28.4v the 24 /3000/ 70 Phoenix inverter carried on charging but at much lower rate

But the app only showed 63% and stayed there. so on my thinking that was time to synchronise to 100%.

And that counts as one cycle?

Sorry if this is stupid question but I’ve just had the Lithium-LiFePO4 fitted and I am anxious to get the charging regime right

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Hello, recently my charge controller has stopped charging the battery unless it is below 12.0V which is really low in my opinion, I have researched as much as I could and can not find out why, I have attached screenshots of the system and performance since this started about 5 days ago, thanks for any help!

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I accidently connected the vacuum cleaner (approx. 1800W) to one of the sockets connected to my MultiPlus 500 while shore power was connected. It made a strong buzzing noise as from a relay switching really fast. The inverter works as usual but, now I noticed that the MultiPlus will not charge the battery and are not able to switch over to shore power as before when connected.

Did I burn the “push true” relay or is there any fuses on the 230V level?

Hi, I have been using a 12/3000 flawlessly for 2 years. Last year cleaned connections and replaced lugs with proper crimps and added lithium. I have a line filter that monitors surge, Hz and power characteristics. Everything still worked fine and my batteries are fully charged at 13.4V.

Today, I plugged in AC source (generator and shore) and no AC gets passed through and the batteries do not charge (however the inverter works fine). I measured 120VAC at the first input terminal (on the left). When I connect AC source, the 12/3000 beeps and clicks then beeps and clicks again 30 seconds later. After 4 or 5 beeps and clicks, it stops trying.

Is there a way (switch, assistant, setting) that allows me to force a Quattro into Float -regardless of state of charge on the batteries?

I hope this hasn't been asked before, but search is not working at the moment (internal server error) so,

Here is my scenario, this deployment is in an RV.

I have a Quattro 24/5000/120 connected to a pair of 12V lithium batteries in series, with a BMV 712 monitoring them.

For half the year, this vehicle is spent "off grid", meaning no constant source of shore power (a generator is used to recharge the batteries).
In that scenario I manually manage the charge of the batteries to ~90% SOC (because evidence is showing it increases their lifespan over a constant 100% SOC). I do that by turning off the generator, and the batteries are allowed to discharge with regular day-usage. Then the recharge cycle is repeated.

That works great, however,

For the remaining half of the year, this vehicle is spent on-grid and has a constant AC input. That, of course, triggers the Quattro's charger functionality and it happily tries to recharge the batteries to 100% (with a *mandatory* and unnecessary 1 hour absorption as a bonus). And it repeats this cycle, anytime powerassist is triggered and the batteries are used temporarily (however little), thus discharging them enough to restart the whole cycle over and again.

I don't want it to do that :)

I believe that to be deleteriously burdensome on my batteries (or any lithiums for that matter), who would be much happier at ~50-60% SOC when operating in this "storage" mode.

And that's my issue.

I want to discharge the batteries to 50% and leave them there, while keeping the Quattro happily plugging along doing its other functions like passing power and power-assisting from the batteries as needed.

Is there a way to accomplish this with my Victron equipment?

I've tried a series of hacks to simulate this behavior. Primarily by using the charge rate assistant with an aux1 trigger switch. But even that, even though the assistant is set to 0 amps, when active, still isn't really 0 amps. It keeps a creeping 1.5 to 2 amps going, regardless - which eventually charges the batteries up anyway. Just slower.

Thoughts?

Thanks in advance for your help.

Hi All,

The literature says a 12.8V 300aH LFP smart can take up to 600A but the recommened charge current is less than or equal to 150A. If I were to use a 12KV generator to charge would it be unsafe to regularly charge above the 150A recommened?

Thanks

Hie,

I have a Multiplus 2 connected to a Victron battery (70Ah). The system shuts down after bulk charging as soon as it is about to go into absorption.

Please help

I have a bmv-712 but it does not show any positive readings when charging the battery. It displays negative readings but I can’t figure out why it does not display positive readings when charging.

Any tips???

I have a Quattro 24/5000/120 connected to a pair of 12V lithium batteries in series, with a BMV 712 monitoring them.

After the Quattro completes its absorption cycle, and goes to float, I am seeing a constant .7 amp “parasitic” draw that is being reported equally by the BMV and the battery BMS.

It starts almost immediately after absorption is complete and float starts. It shifts from 0 amps, growing to .7 over the span of a few minutes.

That draw will remain constant for hours/days without any action on behalf of the inverter/charger. Even if the battery SOC continues to drop (below 85% at last test).

That draw appears to be caused by the Quattro itself. I established that as follows:

1) there is no other 24V device in circuit. It’s just the Quattro, the bmv, and the batteries.

2) I shut off the Quattro and watched the load drop to 0 amps, as reported by both the bmv and the BMS. Turned it back on and watched it happen again.

Does that behavior make sense?

Is the Inverter supposed to generate a constant draw? I understand it needs its own internal power consumption, but assumed it would come from shore power -which is currently connected.

Will the Quattro at some point stop discharging and return to keeping the batteries, well, floated? Last time I let it get to 85% before forcing a bulk cycle (out of float) by triggering a (heavy) discharge.

The entire time the display on the CCGX just says float and idle.

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This is not a grid tied system. Just an RV with 50 amp shore power.

I have rebooted/power cycled both the Quattro and the bmv and removed the batteries from circuit and put back in, for troubleshooting.

Thanks in advance for your help.

Today I've spent pretty well all the hours of daylight, and then some tonight, on trying to penetrate the thick defences of my Multiplus 170/50. All I want to do is tick the box to allow more tolerant generator standards, and untick the UPS button, so I can get my generator to charge.

I've tried the MK2 USB dongle with both Windows and Mac computers. I've tried to connect through bluetooth. I've finally managed to send into the nearest city for a long ethernet cable in order to connect to our internet router.

I've successfully installed VRM Portal, and though it is nice to see everything as seen on the colour control mirrored on my laptop, I STILL can't see how to get into the generator settings.

I've worked fairly intensively with computers since 1990, both Windows and Mac, and yet the installing of the USB drivers for the dongle cost me 4 hours, despite following all the instructional videos and reading forums.

Is there anything else anyone can suggest to get me in to where I need to go?

Hello folks, a couple of questions. I have a VW camper with a solar panel c/w Bluesmart 75/15 MPPT controller connected to a SuperB Lithium 90Ah battery with built in BMS. I need to add a mains (240V) charger & am looking at either the Bluesmart IP22 12/15 or the Bluesmart IP65 12/15. Reading through the instruction manual for the IP35 version, I see that a "Test" is carried out prior to charge commencing,:-

The TEST LED will flash as long as a charge pulse does

not increase battery voltage to more than 12,5V resp. 25V.

If the flashing persists during several minutes the battery is

probably damaged (internal short-circuit): disconnect the

charger.

A false rejection may occur if a load is simultaneously

draining a very weak or fully discharged battery during the

test phase: disconnect the load and repeat the test.

Question:-

1) If during the test phase, the solar charger is charging the battery, would the IP65 12/15 charger see the increased battery voltage & assume a fault & fail the test?

2) Is the IP35 version designed to run in parallel with other charging sources? If not, would the IP22 version suffer the same problem?

3) The charger will be permanently hardwired to the to the battery. Depending on circumstances it's highly likely that the charger maybe powered up whilst loads are simultaneously connected, (fridge/lights/diesel heater etc.) these loads may be running during the "test" phase, would this be an issue for either charger in question?

4) If the "test" fails, does the charger lockout until the next power up cycle or does it retry after a period of time?

5) Is there a more suitable charger for the application, it must be Lithium capable & be suitable for permanent installation in a small space, preferably fan-less.

Thanks for any help.

I only use my solar system during summer and I'd like to top my batteries off-season with a cheap method. I do not want to invest into another battery charger, so I figured maybe I could simply use the MPPT for this purpose.

I have 2 x 135ah gel batteries wired in parallel, will a solar controller regognise this as one 270ah battery, effectively doubling the maximum allowable charging current? Or am i safer sticking to the 25 amps i currently charge with.

Cheers.

Hello,

System consists of 3 mppt's 150/70, 100/50. 75/15, 3kva multiplus, Venus gx and four 6v 377ah Trojan flooded batteries on ESS. Average daily discharge upto 70% SOC

I have set the manufacturer absorption voltage of 29.4 and maximum absorption time 4 hours in all the mppt's and the multiplus charger settings, but the absorption only reaches 28.6v and less than 4 hours. When I check the gravity of the cells at 100% SOC they are measuring 1.250 instead of 1.277 which means the batteries are under charged.

What can I do to rectify this problem?

Thanks

I am in the final stages of designing a battery backup system with the Multiplus II. The main purpose of the Multiplus II would be to have a backup power source for when the grid goes down. The Multiplus II would be fed from the grid to ensure the batteries remain fully charged. This would be the first stage of the install and gives me a very good indication of the power draw throughout the day for my critical loads.

The second part of the install would be to connect a PV system (MPPT) that would keep the batteries charged throughout the day. I would then allow a certain % discharge going into the evening. The PV array will be sized based on the power draw of the critical loads and the solar yield on an overcast day on the shortest day of the year (New Zealand - relatively high sunlight levels). On sunny days there will always be excess power available and I would like to dump the excess power into a hot water cylinder. I am looking at including the fronius Ohmpilot that would be connected to the AC-out (non critical load) of the Multiplus II. This way there will only be limited amount of power going back into the grid. I will only be installing the fronius smart meter and leaving out the Victron smart meter upstream of all the electrical loads as the fronius smart meter would be the only meter that needs to determine if the load is dumped into the hot water cylinder or if it is being exported back into the grid. I assume this is correct? Below is an overview of how I would like the final system to look:

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I look forward to comments and feedback on the above.