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chuckheb avatar image
chuckheb asked

MPPT 100/30's not cooperating and only one charging.

System: I have 3 SmartSolar MPPT 100/30's connected individually to (3) 335W panels. They are networked together with a BMV-712 and connected to an 800ah LFP battery, with smartsolar battery setting on LFP. I just switched my battery bank to lithium from AGM, but I had the same issue with the AGMs. In the past, my shore charger was mostly charging the bank, but now I need to switch to solar and Multiplus as I will be leaving the dock soon.


Problem: Only one of the chargers is producing significant wattage (264W currently), and it seems to be charging the battery, although network total power shows 0. The other 2 chargers flicker some wattage and then back off to 0. It seems like the master controller is telling the slave controllers to not charge. In the smartsolar history, one can see that the all the chargers are working as they each have history on some past days of significant charging. I need all of the chargers to work together to charge the lithiums which are currently at 13.18v. Another anomaly is that 1 hour ago I was showing total network power of 255W. I removed each controller and the BMV from the VE network to try to reset it and then rejoined them all, BMV first. Now, total network power shows 0W, but the BMV shows positive wattage (175W) going into the batteries. Mostly, I need the chargers to all work together, instead of just 1 at a time, to bulk up the lithiums during the day. It seems like synching between controllers and the app may have glitches that prevent synchronized charging and also an issue with showing total network power.


On a sunny day this system should be pushing 900W plus into the batteries. Any suggestions?

MPPT SmartSolarVE.Smart Network
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Jesse avatar image Jesse commented ·

How far are the 100/30's from each other? Its not just the distance of the MPPT's to the BMV that matters when you're trying to get network power to calculate and cooperate.

What happens if you delete the VE.Smart network and run each device individually? If the wiring is reasonable each should now produce full power during the day? Might be a solution while you're troubleshooting the network which I've also found unreliable over even moderate distances. If each device is set correctly cooperation only matters at the end of bulk charging or if there's a big distance between the MPPT's and the batteries.

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chuckheb avatar image chuckheb Jesse commented ·

Thanks. They're close to each other. About 1 inch apart from each other and about 3 feet from the BMV. I found 2 of the MPPT controllers are bad when i hooked them directly to one AGM, completely isolated. They will pulse up wattage briefly, but always scale down to 0 rapidly. Not sure what is wrong with them but I will try to exchange them.

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3 Answers
jwfrary avatar image
jwfrary answered ·

Are you using VE Smart network and its connected to a gx device at the same time?

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allen-goldstein avatar image
allen-goldstein answered ·

I just installed 2 75/10s with no network and am having the same issue out of the box. They both produced power for an hour then one went to 0. Only by disabling BOTH chargers the enabling the one at 0 first did they both produce.

The issue occured a second time about an hour later. Only the same steps of disabling both got it back.

Yes I have enough load for both and and not using my shorepower charger. I see by my blue sea (not victron) battery monitor that the is reading 0 in the Victron app is not actually producing power.


I see another unanswered thread here that is similar. Siince these are new, do I need to warrantee replace the one that is going to 0?

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Michelle Konzack avatar image
Michelle Konzack answered ·

Do you have an VE.Direct Bluetooth dongle connected?

What does the App show?

Maybe the second one has a different voltage setup and went into float.

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