question

josick-dufresne avatar image
josick-dufresne asked

Ideas :AI implementation /products ideas / vrm ideas

Hi devs !

To begin Thanks for your work ! Your equipments work great.

I'm a victron user from 6 years and an installer in Guadeloupe France near the soufrière volcano.

We have a total autonomous house for electricity(10kw solar pannels vic quattro and small out of order hydro Electric turbine ) , fresh and hot water, food (almost).

I've got ideas to share from m'y experience.

It could be Nice that the vrm portal and your data base analyse this criteria with artificial intelligence :

We could enter the age and the exact kind of batteries

Idem for the photovoltaic pannels

Taking the serial number of victron products to know the age of the products

And it would take all the informations from all the installations in the world you have with this kind of batteries and system to predict for example how many years of life the batteries (remaining age) .

As well to to identify a problem on a kind of batteries.

Like usually with an x consumption it give x amperes in a night and brutally it gives half or it has reduced during a year.

That could give advices like : the amount of energy stored in your batteries has begun to fall this year, please check your lead batteries (levels/density) .

Or your pannels did produced 50% more last year, check of you need to clean them.

Please check your dc protections.

It would be great to have the estimated age who last to be able to predict when the customer Will have to get money and make an order to change a component.

Like SoC it could have a health percentage of the installation with details when we click on it.

It would be really Nice as well to predict the power production for the day/week/year to come with the pannes power wich is available and the weather the age of the pannels etc, the production of the year before.. .

It could say : the batteries voltage is falling all the time too low, advice: you could add some pannels.or, the weather doesnt permit to have enough production, you could have x ah more of storage to be efficient.

Bmv connected to vrm with a gx component could use data from all the installations who are similar to complete peukert alorithm for energy who last for real life energy calculation (hours / days energy estimation). And use how much it has given the year before on the sale situation.

It could auto activate energy saving mode on low consumption if for example it saws that all the afternoons there is no consumption.

It could give advices on parameters like dvcc would be usefull for you or we saw that you frequently arrive to the limit of power available, you should activate power Assist.

To detect that the absorbtion voltage and float voltage are not the same in the inverter and in the smartsolar.

Sensor/product ideas :

Iot Bluetooth sensor for temperature, hydrogen production and density for lead acid batteries to help maintenance and dvcc production/ regulators / battery long life alorithm... Etc

Iot Bluetooth small sensor for voltage of each 2v battery (to detect bad cabling or inegal voltage to prevent problems)

Iot sensor for solar radiation, degrees, humidity, gyro sensor, wind sensor to help production prediction alorithm. And as well to help long life algorithm to tell for example the outsider temperature and the battery room is too high you maybe should put some insulation to protect them.

Gyro sensor for on water installations (boats, floating pannels..) to identify if it begins to turn too much and cut production if an x angle is reached or weather conditions are too bad)

Iot compatible Connected plugs to auto desactivate non essential components and reduce consumption to go to safe mode for batteries.

Connected victron dc protection for each line of solar pannels or batteries to detect a problem in a line

Victron solar pannels who have voltage /power sensor to detect inside the Black little bow a failure of a solar pannel or cabling and to have a visual grid to see exact production of each solar pannel to optimize placing or replacement/ to help alorithm to predict production / to give advices for azimuth (small gyro sensor ?) or sun orientation.like in small inverters systems.

Solar panels with micro ac inverter inside the Black little box to add to an existing installation to reinforce production without having to change regulator and inverter etc.

Connected uv lamp for gx tank to know for replacement or connected interface to plug an uv lamp.

Iot sensor for earthquakes to cut production when an earthquake arrive.

Vrm portal/victron connect ideas/ general ideas:

Show Temperature from temp sensor in the vrm

Show quattro/multi/Phoenix in device list in vrm and victron connectto be able to modify all the parameters directly from ui with out mk3 and phisycal access

GX dvcc absorbtion and float voltage modify or vrm ui to set the voltage for all the devices

Show the inverter/bmv/gx/smartsolar... consumption in the vrm

GX tank 140 idea: implément temperature sensor receiving for liquids.

Implement liquid pressure sensor receiving to automatically activate pumping.

Implement water Turbidity sensor receiving for poor countries where water is not so good to be able to make corrections and know when filtres has to be changed (with advices from ai alorithm).

Implement water counter sensor receiving to have water consumption in the vrm portal.

Make vrm compatible with connected houses like open source jeedom box/os to export data in custom interfaces for autonomous house managing.

Make gx device compatible with an interface for air conditionning to rectify temperature and help battery long life optimisation.

Add humidity sensor in victron products to shut down production if It's too high.

Make atex inverters for lead acid installations or industrial atex situations

Add thin insulation for inverters for electricity noise

Use passive cooling for inverters

Use Can energy to feed bmv

Thanks for reading and sorry for the mess

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7 Answers
josick-dufresne avatar image
josick-dufresne answered ·

The AI alorithm could calculate annual :

estmated kwh solar production

Estimated consumption and energy needings (the system could advice : you could Add x solar panels to be able to produce it with à Link to victron products and Estimated price)

Estimated grid injection

Estimated hours of generator usage (and gasoil consumption if gx tank is connected)

Water consumption and needings

Energy saved from solar production if we Can enter the kwh price from grid network compared to complete setup price(if we Can enter it in gui) to know in how many years It's profitable for small and big investments projects (seen in a competitor solution)

Another suggestions for vrm :

show how many hours the generator has worked to help maintenance.

Be able to enter the hours between each maintenance to be able to put an alarm by mail.

Maintenance tab with ideas cited above (Estimated replacement parts distance, maintenance for generator, batteries, solar panels, dc protections, solar panel cleaning)

Another idea for gx/vrm:

Be able to connect two installations (like too battery parcs and two inverters to gx and See the two installations in vrm portal.

I experimented to use à Phoenix inverter with a second parc of batteries for emergency usings connected to the ac in of a quattro when the quattro batteries didn't have enough energy.

With old gel batteries on quattro in 48v and New batteries bae gel 2v- 24v batteries on the Phoenix.

And it worked well during one year but I could nt manage the two systems on the color control.

Objective: be more resiliant with two kind of batteries.

Use approx end of life batteries.

Use two different voltages DC systems.

Another idea: be able to put Degrees of inclination of solar panels and azimuth on each solar regulator (with vrm ?) . To maximize production and analyse each array in vrm.

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josick-dufresne avatar image
josick-dufresne answered ·

Another idea: put a cliquable Link on CA loads on vrm to show a table who present :

What kind of device is consuming (gathering thé informations from connected plugs)

Like french energy producer does with linky box.

And an archive with the consumption by kind of devices to help clients to optimize their consumption.


The AI could store the data at What hour this device stats every day and how much it consume to precise energy needings by hour/day/year.



You could add a simulator on your website where people indicate their parameters(quatre meters of the house, number of rooms, number of inhabitants, devices used... Etc)

This simulator could take data store on all the vrm to propose a sizing for the installation and propose the good products with the good tutorials.


It would use AI learning of all sub cited parameters to show how much energy is needed, how much it Will cost at the begining and for maintenance and if It's profitable by kwh.

It could as well indicate the Estimated time of du ration of each equipment (basé on data and machine learning).

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josick-dufresne avatar image
josick-dufresne answered ·

Another idea in maintenance widget : show cable loss (calculated from sensors on solar panels, solar charge regulator and bmv informations).

To give the advice to : change cable section / use more panels in serial to low voltage.


Show production loss because of temperature gathered with sub cited sensors in panels and outside temps sensor).

To optimize production predictions

Another idea : make an interface for Electric cars to use energy stored in battery in ac in of inverter.

Use a compatible plug who has data inside to manage using of energy stored or charging.

Shows vehicle battery in vrm

Automatically (from AI) advice and propose to reload the vehicle when the system loads demand is low each day to prevent grid using.

Products idea :

Make a special ac or dc out with a plug for cars reloading in victron inverters to avoid to have Another charger with ac to dc conversion and loss.



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josick-dufresne avatar image
josick-dufresne answered ·

It could be Nice as well to have the Estimated time to full charge in vrm for the charger and the regulator.

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josick-dufresne avatar image
josick-dufresne answered ·

Another idea for à product: an hydrogen atex detector to stop inverter and solar chargé Controller if hydrogen percentage in air in the room is too high.

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mvader (Victron Energy) avatar image
mvader (Victron Energy) answered ·

Hi! A bit overwhelmingly long :-).

thank you for the inspiration!

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josick-dufresne avatar image josick-dufresne commented ·

Hi !

yes :)


Thanks for the answer ;)


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josick-dufresne avatar image
josick-dufresne answered ·

hi @mvader (Victron Energy) thx to have implemented some of the ideas ! good job !

PS : i saw in the last version of vrm that you added consumption forecast, it could be good as well that the blue line ( percentage of load ) who would be estimated as well.

the estimated time to load would be really great.

New idea ; make vrm interface compatible with zigbee and lorawan to gather temp / moist / irradiance / detailed consumption / product in tank temp / tank level etc.. easier without cabling to sensors.

it would maybe be able to have a low consumption profile ( with the connected switches ) who would select only lamps and a router and minimal devices, a normal profile ( who would be parametered ), a degraded profile with only a lamp when the battery is really low.
It could maybe as well launch washing machine, launch a pump, get hot the water only at a percentage of battery load ( i know it's possible by the second out of the transformer, but it would possible to parameter without cabling a second circuit ).

Inspired about what i see in the industry.

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