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aserio avatar image
aserio asked

Multiplus Compact 24/200 - Do I need to setup an assitant?


Hello,

I have recently setup a MultiPlus Compact 24/2000, 100/50 Solar charge controller and RaspberryPi Venus.

Battery capacity is about 11KWH (24volt Tesla).

1300 Watts of solar.

Load power consumption 800 watts.


Here's my logic,

Primarily use solar to run the system.

If solar is not available or cloudy use battery,

If battery gets low use solar to charge battery (if available) or use grid power to charge battery.

I have been running the system during the day just fine by manually turning on the inverter and usually there is plenty of solar to run both the load and slow charge the batteries.

Would an assistant in the Multiplus be able to achieve this and if so which one?


thank you for your time.

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2 Answers
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boekel answered ·

Yes:

ESS assistant or ignore AC-in assistant for the functions you want.

And depending on the type of BMS you use you might need an assistant for that (the ESS assistant also provides BMS option). an CANbus BMS goes through the Venus device.

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aserio avatar image aserio commented ·

I have setup the assistant Self Consumption Hub-2 v3 with the settings matching my setup, one thing i don't get is that the battery is currently charged to 24.6 volts (max setting) but the SOC only shows 10%, shouldn't this be 100%?

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aserio avatar image aserio aserio commented ·

Here's the assistant i configured.

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boekel avatar image boekel ♦ aserio commented ·

if you have a Venus device (the raspberry pi in your case) I'd be tempted to use the ESS assistant, but I don't know the details of your installation and if you're allowed to feed back into the grid.

What BMS are you using?

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aserio avatar image aserio boekel ♦ commented ·

Thanks Boekel. As far as the ESS, i am a bit confused. There's ESS on the Multiplus via the VE.config software and there's ESS on the Raspberry Pi Venus, are these the same? On the Pi, under ESS, it says "No Assistants Found"?

As far as BMS, i really wish Victron made a BMS for OEM batteries. As such i plan on purchasing the upcoming Batrium WatchMonPlus which supports my Tesla batteries.

And no, I cannot feedback to the grid.


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boekel avatar image boekel ♦ aserio commented ·

You're asking a lot of questions but don't give information, this makes it difficult to give a meaningful answer.

What kind of system are you building? residential? off grid? boat? RV? ???

Please read this:
https://www.victronenergy.com/live/ess:design-installation-manual

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aserio avatar image aserio boekel ♦ commented ·

I apologize about all the questions. This is an "offgrid" system, i only wan to use the AC In on the multiplus as a last resort to charge the batteries, again no AC back to the grid.


thanks

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boekel avatar image boekel ♦ aserio commented ·

Did you read all the information about ESS systems? so that answered your questions about that?

As for assistants:
-generator start/stop to ignore AC-in (grid)

https://www.victronenergy.com/live/assistants:ignore_ac_input_using_the_generator_assistant
-assistant for the BMS of choice.

I'm not familiar with the self consumption assistant. I do believe it is/was intended for AC coupled systems, and I think it's quite old / don't know if it is up to date.

your SOC is calculated by the Inverter if you don't have a BMS, you need to set the parameters there correctly.


Please don't use the batteries without a BMS, I use 'SimpBMS' for OEM batteries, works very well with the original Tesla BMS slaves.

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aserio avatar image
aserio answered ·

I have read the ESS documentation so many times I am losing sleep trying to understand it. I didn't expect this to be so difficult for me. Maybe i underestimated my idea to prioritize solar... I didn't think my setup was this unusual.


As far as the BMS, I stated before that I am waiting for the Batrium WatchMonPlus to be released. I have also reached out to the "SimpBMS" developer (Joe) and will be notified when more are available.



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boekel avatar image boekel ♦ commented ·

SimpBMS developer is Tom de Bree, he has them in stock again just now.

https://www.diyelectriccar.com/forums/showthread.php?t=198263

Please: do -not- use a Battery Protect between battery and inverter, this is only for DC-loads (if you'd have them)

You can use a Breaker with a trip-unit to let the BMS disconnect the battery when under / over voltage events happen, this would be a situation where one of the components doesn't listen to the BMS and shouldn't happen normally.

I asked you to read the ESS documentation so you'd learn about it..and conclude that you don't need it (yes I can be mean sometimes). you only need ignore AC-in and BMS assistants.

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