Hi I am not a expert with rf issues by any means.

There are many of these units out there on many many boats and I have never seen or herd of this happening,

some possible suggestions.

1. make sure the frame of the unit is earthed

2. make sure the frame of the panels are earthed

3. try earthing the negative connection on the mppt unit that goes to the battery (for testing only dont leave this permanently connected unless you have proper advise. thats if this unit is on a boat)

4. make sure the unit is on the Latest firmware as a starting point

5. to do this easly you would need a Victron bluetooth dongle, (having this bluetooth connection has a lot of benefits as well, as you can see a full history for the last 30 days plus you can turn the charger off and on remotly via you phone app plus many more benifites

6. If possible see if you can lend/borrow another unit and see if that has the same issue.

7. please advise the part number and serial number of the unit as this may help victron support after the above has been tried

hope the above maybe of some help to you

Hi Peter,

Firsly, Sorry to hear you are having issues. PJ has given a great list of suggestions.

I need to address something you have raised generally about Victron's compliance and approvals.

Victron takes its radio frequency testing very seriously!

I have visited the testing lab in The Netherlands and they have spared no expense in building an amazing facility. Equipment is designed and refined with power engineers able to immediately see the results of various shielding and EMF emitting parts.

However of course this cannot cover all the variables of the real world installations.

There is something possibly wrong with your unit. I suggest you talk to the distributor where you bought it from and tell them about the symptoms you are seeing and the tests you have conducted that make you think that the Victron part is at fault. For example I have seen wiring of solar arrays also cause EMF issues, regardless of controller. If this is the case here, this can be corrected, but not by fixing the MPPT. So it should be tested independently of the installation.

If you would like to read more about our EMC testing facility, there was a good blog post.

This is it when I visited last year and got to see the testing and improvements with my own eyes:

We already had similar problems with an amateur radio group of austrian forces with an 100/50. They searched and made a filter with 15 winds on TX102/66/25-3C1 on each solar input plus and minus... This completly fix their Problems . May be that also fix your problems.

Well my Victron is no longer causing RF noise because it failed, caught on fire then damaged by shed to the tune of $20,000 and cooked my batteries to the point they all exploded.

good one Victron, I now know what product not to buy.

I made an account just to respond and confirm that I am indeed having the same issues. As are MANY cruisers down here in the Caribbean. If Victron is doing RF testing, then I'm not sure what they are doing wrong.

We have 3 Victron MPPT controllers aboard (2 100/30 and one 75/15). All of them put out noise on the VHF. Generally, its not a problem for voice communication, but it massively reduced our AIS range.

We have verified this interference multiple ways.

1. We turn the solar input off on all 3 controllers and can watch our AIS pick up boats 3 times as far away.

2. At night our AIS range is 3 times as far!

3. Our Vesper AIS has a noise meter built into the software. You can literally watch the interference kick in as we turn on even one of the controllers.

We have tried all the suggestions above to no avail. I have some ferrite beads on order, but it will be a while before I get them (there is no Amazon down here in the islands). Sigh, throw in the numerous software bugs in their firmware and I'm wishing I bought a competing brand!

I have two Victron Smart Solar 100/30 MPPT controllers. When enabled, they significantly reduce range or eliminate reception of AIS targets, especially the weaker Class B signals. The ferrites suggested don’t cover the AIS frequencies (161.975-162.025MHz) unless my very bad German is mistaken. Can anyone (hopefully from Victron with an official solution) recommend an alternative choke? A US supplier would be great.

BTW, I am posting this for three boats I know with this issue and Victron controllers.

Thanks,

Tim

Tim Goodyear

Hi!

I´ve got the same RFI/EMC issue.

The 150/60 is really noisy from HF up to ~100 MHz.

No problems at 144 MHz (I´m a ham radio operator) , but it useless from HF to +50 MHz.

I´ve tried to put several ferrites at the solar inputs and outputs but there´s no difference at all.

The 150/60 is well grounded as the rest of the stuff in my radio schack.

When I shut off the unit the noise is totally gone. (no DC from the solar panels)

I do need help, this product is useless for me, the unit/s must be faulty.

There´s must be a replacement unit for this fault?

Thanks!

Regards,

Christian Åkesson

Hi, thought I would share some tests we found, not strictly helping with the RF noise but this proved useful in our application.

We had an experience with noise and switching frequency from a customer with several smart solar mppt 75/15 and 100/50's where we received feedback that a proximity sensor they were using was failing when in use running in the system with the mppts. Investigated noise and switching frequency on the output of the MPPT, and could identify switching frequency and noise in the output wires and radiated from the unit from measurements on an oscilloscope. Tried the ferrite beads on the solar and battery wires but couldn't measure much difference (our measurement device was not very accurate at picking up the noise, but could clearly see the switching frequency introduced when the solar was turned on) We found using a Victron Orion DC to DC converter on the output appeared to completely remove the switching frequency measured on the output load wires when solar was turned on and charging the battery. It appeared that the DC to DC converter had better filters on the output which gave a much smoother signal on the output wires removing the switching frequency and apparent noise.

This was an interesting thread. I had never noticed any significant change in AIS range when solar was "ON" or "OFF", but I had never looked for it either. Certainly I have never noted any interference on the voice side of our marine VHF systems which have always had excellent range on both receive and transmit.

I have a single BlueSolar MPPT 100/50. The MPPT sits right next to the AIS and the wires from the panels run in the same space as the coax that leads to the dedicated AIS antenna. No chokes or other measures to control radiation are installed.

I fired up the software to do a deep dive into the AIS reporting. I cycled the MPPT ON and OFF for 15 minute intervals, will looking at the number and maximum range of vessels being seen for both Type A and Type B.

The effect of the running MPPT on the AIS ship reports was: Zero. Zilch. Nada. Turning on the MPPT did not result in the loss of a single long range contact nor a decrease in rate of received updates. For us, in our current location and antenna height, that range is about 30 nautical miles on Type A, and about 15 on Type B.

Just another data point.

Might be interesting to see if there is any consistency of AIS transceiver brands for people with issues.

@Peter,@travellerw, @sm6vtz

I have been following this thread and wondered? What common denominators do you all share apart from a MPPT and I do notice a different number of models here. With many thousands of these sold it seems, while being a concern, a very small number and not even the same model It would be interesting if you can find maybe a manufatured date that is similar it could point to some faulty batch of components? Also, what panels do you have in your installations, fuses, or anything else like wiring that may actually cause a problem for the MPPT? Where does the wiring run along etc etc. Did you possibly experiment with another product to just be 100% sure. When did this start or was it from the date of installation? Was the installation done professionally? Are your panels correctly matched for your MPPT and you are not just pushing the boundaries? I did problem solving for a living and too often, the problem is not what it seems. I sincerely do hope you get sorted and can join the thousands of happy Victron users. As you also are aware emergency services and many others use Victron equipment and in mission critical situations across the world where this would have been very evident. Just some more food for thought.