Hi all, so my new Multiplus II and BlueNova RacPower have been running for just over a week. I don’t have any PV yet, waiting for delivery of solar panels. Over the weekend I installed ESS to get a feel for it for when my panels do finally arrive. ESS is set to keep charged.
Ever since then I have an odd LED display on the Multiplus when normal power is on and the battery is charging, the mains on and absorption LED’s are on solid and the inverter on LED is flashing. Occasionally the inverter on LED goes off and on other occasions it stays on solid for a few seconds and then resumes the flashing.
I have the Victron toolkit app but this combo does not appear in the LED definitions. Any ideas please?
My MP2 was doing the same thing and eventually it started to switch over to Inverter mode even when the grid was on. @plonkster told me to check incoming voltage from the grid and it was running too high…around 253V.
Out of interest’s sake:
What does it do when you change it to “Optimized with BatteryLife” and a Minimum SoC of 100%?
I’m in the same boat without panels, but found that “Keep batteries charged” tends to drain a little, charge a little constantly. With Optimized it charges to 100%, drains until 99% and stays there until it either goes to 98% because of the little use from the Cerbo / Multi or a return from a loadshedding stint.
I just vaguely remember seeing the same on my Multi, but I have loadshedding now, so can’t test it
Now that I think about it I can’t remember when last it drained to 98% with this constant loadshedding. Maybe September last year?
Well, there’s your problem lady. Well, not a problem really… it’s just normal. When you install ESS, the inverter runs grid parallel, so rather a lot more LEDs are on/flashing at the same time.
Check the online manual, it is all there At least… it should be there.
OK… weird. I’m getting old (in Victron terms). Been around since Hub4 was the new hotness, and I thought it was pretty well known that once you go grid-parallel, it is normal for the inverter component to be on at the same time as the grid, and therefore the green LED would blink. Apparently that ball was dropped somewhere
I just tested on mine. ESS with “Keep batteries charged” does what you say with “inverter on” flashing every now and then and staying solid or off for longer periods inbetween.
You’ll also see the batteries being used and charged ever so slightly in the “System - Battery Power” widget.
I would just change it to “Optimized with BatteryLife” and set the minimum SoC to 100%. The batteries are then charged to 100%, used until 99% and then idle until they hit 98% due to GX / Multi usage at which point it’ll charge to 100%, use to 99% and repeat (until the next time / loadshedding).
Please don’t do that in a system with PV connected, or at least, not unless you fully understand the troubles that can cause.
In this case, no PV connected, but I feel like I must say this
What happens is that the battery accepts very little charge, because it is basically completely full (especially lead acid, but lithium also this high up), but because the battery is below the minsoc (99% < 100%), the Multi is in low-power let’s-not-drain-the-battery mode. Then the customer mails support and asks why his PV is not used…
Depending on your charge efficiency settings, whether you have a BMV/shunt, what those things are set to, or if you had SOC drift, this can cause a lot of trouble. If you want the batteries to remain full, use Keep Batteries Charged.
I always appreciate these little extra bits of information, thank you!
So in this case should I have PV, but want a 100% SoC because of a looming long outage (we have a 2 day no power due to maintenance window coming up as an example) I should rather use Keep Batteries Charged to keep them full. Got it!
But yes, I will have Optimized with a 20% SoC once PV comes, so should be good otherwise.
At least… it should be there.