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benl avatar image
benl asked

MPPT "free energy"!? / Why does the SmartSolar report power yield with no panels connected?

Below is a screenshot from a SmartSolar MPPT 100/30 connected to a 4-cell Li-Ion battery. Apparently over the last few days between 22 and 52 W of power has gone in with maximum battery voltages of 14.11-14.2V each day.



Problem is there have been no panels connected, and no load on the battery either, for the last two weeks. i.e. it's just the MPPT controller, a BatteryProtect, and nothing else.


The voltage displayed as Battery min is the actual battery terminal voltage, the rest of the data is garbage. What's up?


Or have Victron embedded a perpetual motion / free energy machine inside every MPPT controller? :-)

MPPT Controllers
1555163324940.png (208.2 KiB)
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solgato avatar image solgato commented ·

Is this a new install, or did you have it installed then disconnected?

The App says today, yesterday, 2 days ago, etc.. but those are not calendar dates, those are charge cycles.

The charger doesn’t know what day it is, just knows that when the voltage is high enough that it’s time to wake up and from then on I believe it shows a daily cycle, but it’s from wake up to wake up I believe.

If it was previously hooked up to panels, it is probably showing you the info from the last day it was working and the previous days leading up.

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benl avatar image benl solgato commented ·

Ah, that makes sense. I'd assumed there was a time sync between the phone and controller. I don't see what's wrong with correct labelling though ("current cycle", "cycle -1", "-2", etc).

This also explains one period earlier where the panels were covered; the "day" seems to have been skipped in the app's display.


Disappointing Victron haven't nailed this free energy feature though.

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porcini avatar image
porcini answered ·

This shows probably the last 30 days the panels have been connected. Please check again tomorrow for changes.

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porcini avatar image porcini commented ·

Instead of giving me a downvoting it would be nicer to tell us if the values changed today. If they haven't changed that's the correct answer and there is nothing wrong with the charger. The MPPT doesn't have a RTC as @Solgato said.

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