question

@MediaOne I understand the frustration, but remember, this is a community of volunteers, who just don't have all the answers.

Sure, we are fortunate to have some staff members taking part but they can't get to everything, and that isn't the intention of the site as we explain in the guidelines.

For that there is formal support, though that role is fulfilled by the master distributor who ultimately supplied the gear.

There are many reasons why questions go unanswered.

The internet is not suited to support - we can't see your system or access the various details needed.

Members often don't detail their setup, or necessarily have the skill to do so.

A problem can have many different causes but presents in the same way.

When a problem is resolved, a member may not report back or accept the solution that actually worked, and in many cases it is actually user error.

There are also many duplicate topics, finding one with useful information isn't easy, unfortunately, because too many people just create a new topic and don't search, and add to, existing ones.

This is one of the motivating factors for the new community that you will experience in the near future.

I would encourage you to follow the formal support procedure since you are having a recurring issue.

Of course everything you say is understandable and reasonable. The fact remains that it is surprising that a solution hasn’t been been found (or if it has, not posted) given the obvious demand. In fact I am also in the middle of dealing with the official distributor I originally purchased the unit from. I already received a replacement board from Victron but it hasn’t fixed the problem. I’m unable to take the next repair step (shipping the entire unit to Florida from St. Martin) and was looking for an in-the-field solution. Anyway, it’s just very surprising to me that this issue is so prevalent. I would just buy another Victron inverter charger combo, but how can I know this issue won‘t rear its ugly head again. Thanks.

Hi @MediaOne

One of my main responsibilities in being community manager (aside from keeping the peace) is identifying when there is a pattern behind a specific bug or issue and then collecting all the evidence, knowing how to articulate it all, and who to escalate it to.

While I regularly see reports of high temp, and high current alarms, those are both so dependent on specifics of site installation and specific load types, I haven’t yet seen a clear pattern of cause that I could then collate and escalate.

You’ve mentioned that you might have identified a pattern, perhaps I’ve missed it, could you please link together some posts you’ve seen and I’ll have closer look?

I have absolute confidence in Victron as an R&D company that anything that we can clearly identify can be fixed by the engineers.

But that first step of finding the common cause isn’t always so easy, and is often elusive once digging into the details a bit.

In almost all cases once the problem appears to be resolved for an individual they will lose all interest in following up with a full post mortem and more details. So what appears unresolved, often is resolved but silently.

Overload and over temp faults are also notoriously hard to reproduce on a test bench - https://www.victronenergy.com/media/pg/Pre-RMA_Bench_Test_Instructions/en/pre-rma-test-form---inverter-charger.html

Equipment that a customer cries out is constantly causing issues works flawlessly on a known good working test bench. That’s a very frustrating situation for everyone, and from Victron’s perspective points to installation or site specific issues, but then isn’t able to do much to resolve.

In some cases the temperature can be outside the unit all together and reported by an external third party BMS, but this is usually quickly isolated as part of a troubleshooting process.

Further to you other question, there is no one ambient temperature sensor in Victron products. Temperature is monitored in multiple places where heat is critical.

Each has a different heating and cooling profile, and an algorithm determines what is too much and what is done about it.

Main sensors common across all the toroidal inverters are a clear externally linked sensor that attaches to the copper transformer coil (you can see the wire that connects to the PCB), this is relatively slow to overheat because of the large thermal mass of the coil.

Another one would be in the MOSFET bridge that controls the switching that forms the DC to AC sinewave, these are much faster to heat up (but also to cool down).

There are more depending on the specific product, and most likely there is one anywhere you see heat forming if you put a thermal camera over the unit under load.

Thanks for the replies.

Guy, here are the threads that I’ve found that overlap as close as possible to my issue. Hopefully they illustrate enough continuity for your purposes:

https://forums.ybw.com/threads/victron-multiplus-internal-temperature-alarm.610134/

https://community.victronenergy.com/questions/206788/this-is-a-weird-one-multiplus-ii-showing-bulk-but.html?childToView=322311#comment-322311

https://community.victronenergy.com/questions/139460/multiplus-2-persistent-high-temp-alarm.html

https://community.victronenergy.com/questions/296602/multiplus-123000-high-temp-alarm-charging.html

Thanks for describing the temp sensors. I saw those inside the unit. I also noticed that if I disconnect their lead at the PCB, that the cooling fans run full speed, and the unit will keep itself “Off”.

In my amature opinion, I think the most relevant symptoms in my case are:

1) I recently replaced the control board PCB and the problem persists.

2) When charging initiates (from “cold” inverter state), an immediate high internal temp AND high battery temp sense at the same time is odd. Especially given that the sensors are no where near each other. This is a very intermittent situation; normally only the internal temp is indicated as high when the transfer switch clicks over.
3) When charging proceeds without a temp warning (and subsequent drop to 0 amp flow), the Multiplus stays in charger mode but varies the amp flow between 0 and under 10. As an example, it will indicate “bulk charging”, but sit at zero amp flow for an extended period of time (hours?)

Why is the charge current so drastically reduced compared to the 80amp capability? (40 amp limited setting in my case)

What additional field tests can I do?

Thank you