I have a need to keep 120V maximum 50W of load powered in the case of a power outage and to be able to remotely monitor the SOC of the batteries. The configuration runs off of 2 x AGM 12V 100Ah batteries connected in series with a SmartShunt 500A, a Phoenix Inverter 24V 250VA 120V, a Blue Smart IP65 24V 8A charger all connected to a Raspberry Pi acting as a CerboGX.
Both the SmartShunt and the Inverter are connected to the Pi via the VE.direct to USB cable and are visible via the VictronConnect Application and VRM.
Since the Charger only has Bluetooth capability, we can not manage it remotely, but only locally which is fine. But non of the devices talk to each other over a virtual Victron wireless network like a SmartShunt can with an MPPT for example.
The problems that I am seeing are the following:
- When looking at the inverter, it only show 0% load. That value never changes.
- When looking at the SOC on the SmartShunt for the batteries, they are continuously reporting as discharging even though the Charger is permanently connected and charging the batteries.
- In the VRM portal, the current flow is going from the batteries to the Inverter and not from the Inverter to the batteries as I would have expected it since the inverter is supposed to keep the batteries topped off when AC power is usually available.
Is this configuration simply not possible because each element do not have a way of communicating to each other?
Or is the Charger not to be connected to the negative terminal of the battery bank but needs to go through the system Negative of the SmartShunt? (I have tried that but to no difference).
The setup is available at https://vrm.victronenergy.com/installation/216745/share/97d4ba88
Thank you for any help anyone can provide.