Victron Setup asistance

[stoic]

Hi there,

So i have the entire system installed now. 

I have a few questions:

1. Victron Connect - For some reason i cannot pair with with my Smart Solar MPPT 250/100-tr, it is stuck at "Connecting 40%".
2. Three phase Daisy chaining - 
   1. RJ45 - How do i need to wire it. Is it the usual way or crossover?
   2. Where does these cables connect to on each of the inverters
3. Right now I have the three inverters connected to AC and i have disconnected the Battery bank from it. Even though i have three phases i can still run each inverter on each phase independently, and i have no three phase equipment running off the inverters. So at least i will have power for the night.
   1. Should i be concerned bout anything seeing though no setup has been done yet?
   2. I need power to research so i hope i can run the three inverters as is for now without battery and solar, just off mains.

@plonkster - Tagging you as you are a victron expert. but anyone else that can help, please do.

[stoic]

UPDATE

Managed to get the vicron connect to connect to my MPPT (USed a different Device)

Question: I've configured the MPPT as follow: https://www.victronenergy.com/live/battery_compatibility:pylontech_phantom. The only section pertinent to the charger and batteries are section "4.2 Charge Settings"

In fact... the only settings i applied was 4.2 as the rest is not apparent on the app.

I've switched off my CC and batteries after i applied the settings to make sure i get some feedback from the forum before i switch it on and let it run.

[___]

17 hours ago, stoic said:

Managed to get the vicron connect to connect to my MPPT (USed a different Device)

Indeed. The bluetooth on some devices are difficult. Sometimes even popular devices, eg I had trouble on a Samsung S4 mini.

19 hours ago, stoic said:

RJ45 - How do i need to wire it. Is it the usual way or crossover?

Straight... like ethernet. In fact if you have some ethernet cables around you can use them.

19 hours ago, stoic said:

Where does these cables connect to on each of the inverters

It's inside the inverter. You have to open it up.

19 hours ago, stoic said:

I need power to research so i hope i can run the three inverters as is for now without battery and solar, just off mains.

You're supposed to install a bypass switch so you can have power even though the inverters are off :-)

You should be able to run them without the full setup... they will just act like a UPS on each phase, and you can't use 3-phase loads on the output side.

[stoic]

21 minutes ago, plonkster said:

It's inside the inverter. You have to open it up.

each inverter has 2 ve.bus ports

So i connect from

inverter one VE.bus to inverter two ve.bus.

then from inverter 2 ve.bus (2nd one) to inverter 3 ve.bus.

then from inverter 3 ve.bus (2nd one) to venus gx ve.bus

is this the correctway? can i then switch on the inverters after i've done this? or do i need to program it first. ... i'd like to do it step by step

Edited January 13, 2019 by stoic

[stoic]

18 minutes ago, plonkster said:

You're supposed to install a bypass switch so you can have power even though the inverters are off 

haha ... i got a bypass switch ... damed if i knew how to wire it. does anyone have a diagram?

I have three phases coming in and a three pole changeover switch. 

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1 hour ago, stoic said:

is this the correctway? can i then switch on the inverters after i've done this? or do i need to program it first. ... i'd like to do it step by step

Yes. There is no particular order in which wou're supposed to plug it in, and it's all just in parallel anyway (RS485). But the way you detailed is fine.

You then plug in your mk3-usb programming dongle (you got one right?) into one of the open vebus ports (either on one of the inverters or the Venus-GX, plug that into a laptop and configure it. You can also (I do this often) unplug the cable from the venus-gx and plug that into the mk3-usb. The venus-gx does not have to be connected while programming the Multis, and MUST not be connected while updating firmware.

There is a bit of software called ve quick configure which does the configuration for you. You turn off all the inverters, then start the software, and it will ask you to turn on the unit on L1, then L2 and L3 in that order, and it will configure them for that phase. If you get this wrong it will not accept the incoming AC because the phase rotation is wrong. There is plenty of information about this on the Victron website and also on youtube.

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1 hour ago, stoic said:

haha ... i got a bypass switch ... damed if i knew how to wire it. does anyone have a diagram?

Can I humbly suggest that you bribe or otherwise commission the services of someone who has done this sort of thing before? I don't want to be responsible for blowing things up.

Or look at youtube, and use a multimeter on the ohm range to figure out how the one you have works. Here for example, in Hindi (but you can sort of see the idea). Or this one at 1:37 briefly mentions it and you can see the two source sides at the bottom (one will be grid and the other inverter) and the 3 outgoing lines at the top.

What to do with Neutral? If my understanding is correct, you can share it (ie leave it permanently connected to both supplies), but again... this is where it might be good to have an actual electrician on board. I'm a software guy with SOME experience in this regard... I'm not responsible for breakage :-)

Edited January 13, 2019 by plonkster

[stoic]

17 minutes ago, plonkster said:

Yes. There is no particular order in which wou're supposed to plug it in, and it's all just in parallel anyway (RS485). But the way you detailed is fine.

You then plug in your mk3-usb programming dongle (you got one right?) into one of the open vebus ports (either on one of the inverters or the Venus-GX, plug that into a laptop and configure it. You can also (I do this often) unplug the cable from the venus-gx and plug that into the mk3-usb. The venus-gx does not have to be connected while programming the Multis, and MUST not be connected while updating firmware.

There is a bit of software called ve quick configure which does the configuration for you. You turn off all the inverters, then start the software, and it will ask you to turn on the unit on L1, then L2 and L3 in that order, and it will configure them for that phase. If you get this wrong it will not accept the incoming AC because the phase rotation is wrong. There is plenty of information about this on the Victron website and also on youtube.

I can successfully connect inverter one to inverter two, but not 2 to 3. as soon as i do it inverter 2 and three clicks and the "inverter" on and "bulk", "obsortion" and "float" LEDs flash, and there is now power on their outputs

[___]

Truth be told, I have never done a 3-phase system from scratch. I've tweaked settings on them using remote veconfigure, that's the closest.

Assuming you have an android phone (maybe also for iPhone), look on the app/play store for something called the "Victron Toolkit". It has a feature for decoding the LED status shown. I don't see one like you explained, but it may be error 3 (more devices than expected were found), which might be simply because it is not configured yet. Since you just want it to act as a single phase thing... just leave the cable unplugged so they inverters don't know about each other, at least until you can configure it.

[stoic]

45 minutes ago, plonkster said:

Truth be told, I have never done a 3-phase system from scratch. I've tweaked settings on them using remote veconfigure, that's the closest.

Assuming you have an android phone (maybe also for iPhone), look on the app/play store for something called the "Victron Toolkit". It has a feature for decoding the LED status shown. I don't see one like you explained, but it may be error 3 (more devices than expected were found), which might be simply because it is not configured yet. Since you just want it to act as a single phase thing... just leave the cable unplugged so they inverters don't know about each other, at least until you can configure it.

K... so i got it working without switching off

 

I used ve coonfigure to set it up as three phase.

now.. if i am running off solar and battery power, everything is 100%. but as soon as i switch on mains, all three inverters switches off and the overload light flashes on all of them

[stoic]

Managed to get one step further.

I successfully used the quick configure app and the LED app to set up three phase by eliminating some things.

Now i can start up the system with both AC and DC inputs.... the three inverters runs for about 40 seconds, then all three switches off and the "Inverter on" and the "Bulk" light flashes, while float stays lit... unfortunately the LED app does not have that one

[___]

2 hours ago, stoic said:

Now i can start up the system with both AC and DC inputs.... the three inverters runs for about 40 seconds, then all three switches off and the "Inverter on" and the "Bulk" light flashes, while float stays lit... unfortunately the LED app does not have that one 

Do you have the Venus-GX wired up yet? Is it connected to the internet? Does it show any error codes? If all else fails you can also  PM me the site id (under Settings -> VRM Portal) and I might be able to get the info from VRM. The official support channel is to work through your reseller (that is to say, this is not an official support outlet), but I can do that much for you :-)

[stoic]

@plonkster just got it up and running

both AC and dc is connected and switched on. its been about 30 minutes.

I have a few issues though

1. VenusGX only uploads data after i restart it... once it did it once it refuses to do so again
   1. this is not a serious issue though, i am sure i can troubleshoot my way through it.
2. Venus control is still showing my batteries at 100% yet. I can see the voltage and the current of the batteries, but SOC is 100%, even after running off the batteries for half an hour now.

Edited January 13, 2019 by stoic

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5 minutes ago, stoic said:

VenusGX only uploads data after i restart it... once it did it once it refuses to do so again

Default interval is 15 minutes.

13 minutes ago, stoic said:

Venus control is still showing my batteries at 100% yet. I can see the voltage and the current of the batteries, but SOC is 100%, even after running off the batteries for half an hour now.

Did you enable the Battery Monitor in veconfigure? Is your Ah capacity set correctly? I assume you don't have a BMV in the system?

[___]

Hang on... I cannot remember exactly what batteries you used, but Pylontech, right? If that is the case, then you need to use the right canbus cable. The one that ships in the box doesn't work. You need type-B cable,see here. Then you should see the SOC from the batteries.

[stoic]

4 hours ago, plonkster said:

Hang on... I cannot remember exactly what batteries you used, but Pylontech, right? If that is the case, then you need to use the right canbus cable. The one that ships in the box doesn't work. You need type-B cable,see here. Then you should see the SOC from the batteries.

arghh .. so i had everything purring like a kitten last night, i had to enable battery monitoring, set up an assistant, and it seemed fine, then i wanted to figure out why my supply is not switching over to mains when the battery reached 60% dod.  I plugged my MK3 into my laptop, opened the ve.bus configure and my three inverters suddenly switched off and the "Battery Low" light was on, i figured this was just a coincidence as the inverters probably now picked up that the battery reached 60% DOD, but it never switched to mains. I ended up disconnecting the batteries and tried to run it off mains but it does not want to work.

At least now i know how to set everything up, so i am thinking i will reset my inverters tonight and start the process over.

Is there a way to reset a router to factory settings?

 

Edited January 14, 2019 by stoic

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4 minutes ago, stoic said:

tried to run it off mains

It needs battery power to run.

4 minutes ago, stoic said:

Is there a way to reset a router to factory settings?

I  haven't seen one without this feature yet. But it would depend on the router...

[stoic]

17 minutes ago, plonkster said:

I  haven't seen one without this feature yet. But it would depend on the router...

hahaha ... i meant to say "inverter" ... is there a way to reset the inverter to factory settings  

[___]

37 minutes ago, stoic said:

hahaha ... i meant to say "inverter" ... is there a way to reset the inverter to factory settings  

Yes. In veconfigure there is an option somewhere, might be on one of the dropdown menus. I have most definitely seen it before just can't remember... (and because I work on Linux it means starting a windows virtual machine just to check... which I'm much too lazy to do now).