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old-bargee avatar image
old-bargee asked

smart solar and quattro disagree

I have a 5kw quattro and it has always worked perfectly on our 600Ah wet lead acid traction battery set*. I just installed a new set of solar panels (660w worth) and a 100-50 smart solar regulator. The batteries were fully charged and on float from the Quattro. I set the MPPT to the same parameters as the Quattro but the charge went to bulk and stayed there all day with the batteries bubbling away. It never reduced the charge.

*Last year I had the same set up but fed the output from the solar charger into the solar socket on the quattro and that worked fine though I do not know if the quattro was regulating a regulated current (if you see what I mean) I am going to increase the number of panels and as I do not know how much the quattro socket can take I wired them as per your diagram to the battery positive and shunt of the BMV712.

As the batteries behave perfectly on the quattro alone I assume there are no problems there.

Any ideas?

smart solar set-up help
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2 Answers
JohnC avatar image
JohnC answered ·

Hi @old bargee

More questions than answers..

What is this 'solar socket on the quattro' of which you speak? Have you ac-coupled solar too?

While this 'bubbling away' was happening, what was the batt V? Is there a chance your new mppt is set to the wrong nominal batt V?

If you could post pics of relevant VRM graphs, maybe VictronConnect, even visuals of your connections, it would help. Batt V too, it's really hard to help without more info.

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old-bargee avatar image
old-bargee answered ·

Hi @JohnC, well on my somewhat old (12 yrs) there is a socket marked solar. Although it is not mentioned in the manual that came with the unit. Whatever it is, it accepted and added the solar output for the last 8 years! Our battery setup is 24 volt and the bulk charge is supposed to be 29.5 volts. I use position 4 on the MPPT. When The same setup was sent direct to the quatro, the MPPT started on bulk, then ran through absorbtion and onto float with no problems. The only thing I have changed is that the output now goes to the pos and neg bus bars . The voltage shown when it was 'running was 28.8v into fully charged batteries. Sadly I cannot use VE Connect as for some bizarre and unknown reason Victron will not produce a version for Mac and I really don't want to have to buy a PC just for this one little job. The only thing I can think of is that the cabling between the Quattro and bus bars is longer than those from MPPT if that would make a difference, (about 2m compared to 0.5m.

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JohnC avatar image JohnC ♦ commented ·

Yeh ok. The older model may well have had 'solar terminals' for convenience to save running extra wires. Shouldn't affect functionality either way, providing your wires are up to it.

28.8V will be the default Victron setting for Absorb (Victron call 'Bulk' the stage on the way there, so no setting for that). And if it's following it's own algorithm, it's just holding 28.8 and maybe not moving much A if your batts are full.

Bear in mind too that if you noticed this happen immediately after changing wiring, then the mppt will have reset to a new day, and the adaptive algorithm will start a new cycle, with a full-length Abs time. Let it run unhindered, and the next solar day should be more 'normal'.

For connectivity, please look again at VictronConnect. The kit you have now might well do: https://www.victronenergy.com/live/victronconnect:start

Come back as you need..

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