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vanlifer007 asked

Bluesolar 100/50 & YUASA battery Preset, new to victron please help!!

Hi Guys/Girls :)

I am new to the victron community, I just aquired a bluesolar MPPT 100/50 and VE.direct bluetooth dongle.

I am trying to set up the battery but I am confused as to what preset to use. can you please help, I have attached my battery specs below.

I have 8x of these batteries wired in parralel and the wiring is balanced :)

what is the cyclic charge? in my case does it mean absoption or equalization.

how shall I set the settings below:

- Maximum absorption time
- Rebulk Voltage offset
- Equalization voltage
- Equalization current percentage
- Automatic equalization
- Maximum Equalization duration
- Tail current
- Temp compensation

and the rest of the settings


I have attached the battery specs below as well as screent victron connect battery setting.

I will very much appreciate if you can help me with the preset.

Many thanks for your help :)



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swl2500efr-datasheet.pdf (824.6 KiB)
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3 Answers
JohnC avatar image
JohnC answered ·

Hi @Vanlifer007

What they mean by 'cyclic' is an aggressive charge if you draw the batts down on a daily (say) basis and need to charge them up as quickly as you can. Solar days can be shorter than you think..

With 8x in parallel, you won't want aggression, as imbalance is your enemy there (even if your wiring is good).

I'd pick a milder preset, like the 'Victron Gel OPzV' one, leave any Adaptive option On, and never use Equalize with those batts.

What you may find is that if you draw the batts down a good way, you may not get enough power from a 50A mppt to even reach Absorb V. They'll still accept charge of course, up to 50A if you have enough panel. And maybe force you to change your usage habits if you have only solar as a charge source.

Your batt specs are for 1x batt. But 8x paralleled is different. To me that means you go a little easier on them, trying not to make imbalance raise it's ugly head.




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vanlifer007 avatar image vanlifer007 commented ·

Hi John,

Thank you for the answer.

I followed your advice and chose the "Victron Gel OPzV". Which has 13.80 float. However I can see that the float voltage on the battery data sheet it 13.65 shall I alter this down or it wouldn't matter being x8 batteries higher float won't hurt ?

I have a 30A numax battery charger which I will be using when I am hooked to shore.

I have a VSR linking my starter battery to the battery bank. I understand that this current is not regulated (in the past it destroyed and bludged my 2x full river batteries)

I am planing to add a dc to dc charger like Orion to regulate the alternator battery and hopefully synchronise the solar and alternator charging.

I have a 310w panel and will be adding another one. My usage is mild, 12v Fan, 220V fridge, 12v led lights, few phones and laptops.

This might increase in the future as I am planing on adding an electric water heater and an induction hob.


I was told that 720Ah is an over kill. Who knows I rather not use more than 20% capacity.

Attached is a screenshot of my history. What do you think?


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vanlifer007 avatar image
vanlifer007 answered ·

Please help

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JohnC avatar image
JohnC answered ·

@Vanlifer007

Indeed your usage is light. That'll change markedly once you start heating water, and you may need to look harder at your system needs (panels?) once you do that.

Your batts are overkill with 720Ah @12V. That said, I have 900Ah of 12V batts hanging off the side of a 48V system. Used just for lights, and charged for the last 3 years with a little 8A ac charger from my 48 inverter, with a timer set for solar hours. They were old batt 'rejects' and should be long departed, but still survive because they're treated gently. Just recently revised that setup to charge directly from 48V with a 20A 48/12 Orion dc converter (not the smart one), set to charge depending on the 48V system voltage and/or when my genny is on. That unit only has a single potentiometer setting to adjust it, and I chose 13.5V. To nurse them.. and that's just 4x paralleled, not 8x.

You've likely gathered I'm not a fan of paralleled batts. Long (bad) history there, and if you ever get to buying an inverter, sit back for a while and ask yourself whether you should step up your battery V to 24V, even 48V, to reduce the number of batt strings.

For now, be gentle with them...




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vanlifer007 avatar image vanlifer007 commented ·

John,

I hope you are having a nice day and thank you very much for your time and answers.

I can tell you are not a fan of parallel setups and it is quite understandable. I I had 2x 140AH full river batteries in the past. and I had this good deal on the Yuasa batteries. My mate called me up to buy them for peanuts from a data warehouse demolition, they had all sorts of goodies; thousands of batteries and huge generators.

I was thinking to commission just 4 of these batteries and keep the other 4 as spare and only bring them to call with a kill switch but I thought they might not like sitting for a long time so I ended up parallelling the lot. I could be wrong.

I will probably have to go for 24v but as it stands 12v is straightforward for my campervan.

Can I grab some of your expertise to ask about the inverters and fridges.

I came across a video by Sterling comparing compressor 12v fridges with 220v fridges + inverters and it came out that on the long run the inverter fridge is more efficient than a 12v given the cost of a 12v fridge.


I have a 3000w 12v inverter that came with the van , I don't know if it is a pure sinewave or not. is there anyway to find out?

and why does fridges require a pure sinewave? what is the damage in using a modified sinewave?


Many thanks for your time :)

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JohnC avatar image JohnC ♦ vanlifer007 commented ·

@Vanlifer007

This is all a little offtopic on a Victron forum, but if the other Mods will forgive me...

A 230V 'domestic' fridge will be far cheaper than a 12V one, and if you see one that uses R600a (isobutane) gas, they'll use the least power. They may be a little dearer, or choice-limited, but I found it worthwhile. Anything without a compressor, pass it by.

Your inverter should be labelled 'modified' sinewave if it is. Google might help there to research the brand involved. Usually a 'scope would be needed to check that, but some electric motors like (say) an exposed fan may have a distinctly different sound running the modified wave. They may last 'forever', or for less than 5 minutes. I've seen them go both ways, but don't instil confidence, and best avoided for anything other than resistive loads.

Victron inverters are usually labelled just 'Sinewave'. Understatement maybe, but they don't do Modified. Although their inverters can be forced into passing through some sort of 'chopped/powerfactor-fiddled' version, which I can detect in the tone of a heater fan. I need to do that for deeper reasons, but haven't had failures because of it.

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lklmenterprises avatar image lklmenterprises JohnC ♦ commented ·

Victron Inverters are indeed True sinewave, at least to the point where within a 50/60hz cycle the FETs are switching at a speed of 20khz. So this significantly smooths the Sinewave enough that it can often be a cleaner signal than coming off Grid power.

The Term Modified Sinewave in the Victron units is generally not used for full scale power - in Victron it is used as an energy saving mechanism, usually for small loads until a larger load is seen, then it will restore to Full Sinewave.

When looking at a lot of other Inverters their use of the term Modified Sine wave is actually incorrect IMHO. It stems from the fact they are actually Modified Square wave inverters. i.e. the SQUARE wave is Modified to form a SINE, you are Not Modifying the Sine Wave (as opposed to the Method Victron do in their iteration of the Mod Sin.)

A Square Wave is ON in the Positive for Half the cycle, then On in the Negative for half the cycle. a Modified Square wave reduces the Power ON period in both halves of the cycle inclusive of an OFF period to simulate a closer relationship to a Sinewave. You will notice flicker in lights, and they can be more dull, but the trade off is a Mod SQR is more power efficient (from the source) - just simply due to being off for longer during the duty cycle.

This is a very rough graph of course, and in an Inverter it would be a lot smoother than this, with more steps for each square...but in general this is why Square wave itself is Not used for power generation, except in very cheap and nasty setups...and why Modified Square wave is generally avoided if possible in situations where Heat can be an issue - as that is something you will notice as well as the buzzing.

A general breakdown:

Inverter wave type Features
Square wave
  • Safety of appliances: Less
  • Noise level: High, creates humming noise in inverter as well as in appliances
  • Supported appliances: Motors
  • Price: Economical
Sine Wave
  • Safety of appliances: High
  • Noise level: Normal
  • Supported appliances: Computers, laptops, refrigerators, ovens
  • Price: Little expensive


For me - If I had a hand me down fridge, or $100 special - I wouldn't worry as much about having it on a Modified Sin/Sqr. - But if I had a $4000 unit that orders food by itself...I would be having it on a Pure Sin.

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