According to what I was advised here when my system was first installed, it has everything to do with how it was wired.
In my case, the inverter was 30+ meters from the DB and I used 4 core armoured cable. At the time it was prohibitively expensive for me to buy this for the AC2 output as well and I did not have the large consumers on the AC 1 output.
Thus, even with full sun shining, my inverter remained blissfully unaware of the geyser, stove, microwave etc and Eskom powered those
The ET112 makes that the inverter sees this current draw and provides power to it.
I have to add also, that this meter can talk directly to a Multi-RS over the CAN-bus, and it is SUPER-fast, way faster than any of the other external meters. And for smaller installations, you can run it without a GX device, configuring the setup with only VictronConnect.
Does this mean it can basically run stand-alone without a GX device, where does it store its data then, can it store a certain amount of data on device and display it on Victron Connect, similar to the MPPT’s?
Another question, does it have to be connected directly to a GX device, or can I just connect it via ethernet and connect it to the GX over the network?
It doesn’t. You have no history in that case. There are some applications where the telemetry cannot be logged anyway, so people might opt for not bothering.
Yes. Needs a CAN-bus connection to read RS devices. CAN-bus can be fairly long though.