question

peff avatar image
peff asked

strange behaviour with Victron 100/20 with variable cloudiness

It seems to be a well-known phenomenon that the Victron 100/20s go down once every 10 minutes and the voltage drops.
2023-10-21 19_16_39-Program Manager

But if this happens at a moment when the cloud cover is changing rapidly (April weather), the charger of the Victron stuck at 3-4W charging power.
Often it manages to recover at the next 10min interval. But sometimes it takes much longer... which is really annoying!
A quicker way is to deactivate and reactivate the charger in the APP.
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How do I fix this problem?

There are many places on the web where this issue is described, but unfortunately without a solution.

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11 Answers
nickdb avatar image
nickdb answered ·

It's not a phenomenon, it is by design. The MPPT will briefly track the power point every 10 minutes.

We'd need to know more about your system to understand the behaviour you are seeing.

What other components do you have?

What is the PV voltage at these times?

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peff avatar image
peff answered ·

Thanx for the fast replay.

Yes I know that the 10 minutes drops are the MPPT :-)
But the of drop to 3-4W after that is probably not normal.

My setup looks like this.

Victron 100/20 is connected to two 375W Q.Peak panels.

On the batteries site, there is a Lithium-ion S12 P40 batteries pack and a Hoymiles 300 inverter.


The System is running smoothly since months.

But sometimes when the cloud change rapidly, the charger of the 100/20 drops to 3-4W and gets stuck on this. Sometimes until the next 10 minute rhythm. Sometimes for hours.

The PV voltage at the moment is mostly high, around 80V. The application says no errors and the charger status is shown as “Bulk”.


I initially thought it was a defect or a misconfiguration.

But I found more and more users who have the same problem.

Here in the forum there is also a topic in the German area.





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peff avatar image
peff answered ·

I don't look at the problem every day.

But today is another one of those days with partly rapidly changing cloud cover. So I took a look at the log files and look... the issue has once again cost me an hour of sunshine.


Is Victron as active manufacturer here in the forum?

When can I expect a fix for this issue?

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peff avatar image
peff answered ·

I'll collect all the topics together
Here is one from the German Victron Forum.

https://community.victronenergy.com/questions/158791/de-smartsolar-10020-tracker-hangt-bei-wechselnder.html

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peff avatar image
peff answered ·

next one:
https://www.akkudoktor.net/forum/migrated-forums-balkonsolar/victron-mppt-100-20-aussetzer/

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peff avatar image
peff answered ·

also here:
https://github.com/helgeerbe/OpenDTU-OnBattery/discussions/513

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brezel avatar image
brezel answered ·

My MPPT100/20 with Firmware 1.61 also has drop down, is this topic being addressed by Victron? will there be a solutio?

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Guy Stewart (Victron Community Manager) avatar image
Guy Stewart (Victron Community Manager) answered ·

Hi @Peff,

Thanks for taking the time to collate those other reports, and apologies for taking so long to respond.

I have nothing else to report yet except to confirm that Victron has seen your post and it has our attention.

Regards,

Guy

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peff avatar image peff commented ·

where can I get the beta version 1.6.3?

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semlohnhoj avatar image
semlohnhoj answered ·

Hi, this seems to be a similar issue to the one I had with my 100/20s. See the following link:

https://community.victronenergy.com/questions/181872/smartsolar-10020-drops-to-10w-intermittently-for-n.html

Victron are trialling a beta firmware which completely stopped the problem in my case. I'm not saying it's the same issue though but worth noting. I'm currently using firmware version vC1.63.

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semlohnhoj avatar image semlohnhoj commented ·
Just to clarify, the problems I was having in the post turned out to be 2 different issues. One was the random dropouts which the beta firmware (vC1.63) fixed, the other was an issue after updating Cerbo firmware or rebooting it which turned out to be a software issue in the Cerbo itself.
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Philipp Gahtow avatar image
Philipp Gahtow answered ·

Hello,

I have the same problems with my 100/20 mppt and I want to test the beta firmware on my system as well. I have two 100/20 and two 150/35. The 100/20 drops out all the time. I attach just one time stamp out of the VRM. I’m not willing anymore to reset this with the Connect App - then the software start again to work normal.

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The actual firmware in both 100/20 is the latest v1.61.

Regards Philipp


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Alex Pescaru avatar image Alex Pescaru commented ·

Hi @Philipp Gahtow

The MPPT does its scans at 10 minutes interval. During these scans, the MPPT explore the entire I-V curve, from the maximum voltage down to battery voltage.

Maximum voltage means PV open circuit voltage.

My feeling is that the MPPT is in the protection mode during those missing periods, because, for an 100/20 MPPT, the open circuit voltage it is awfully close to the 100V limit.

Just my opinion, which may be far removed from the truth...

Alex


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Philipp Gahtow avatar image Philipp Gahtow Alex Pescaru commented ·

Hi Alex,

yes the PV open circuit voltage is close to 100v. But since that is not over it’s not a problem and the mppt does not give any errors or not even goes into protection.

I can start the mppt again, with a soft reset (victron connect) of the configuration parameters. This show that it is really a software problem.

Philipp


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Daniël Boekel (Victron Energy Staff) avatar image
Daniël Boekel (Victron Energy Staff) answered ·
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