BUG: Venus Cerbo GX display Essential loads vs AC loads

Been having a weird one with my Cerbo GX lately and wondering if anyone else has clocked this.

Running a fairly standard setup in the motorhome:

• Victron MultiPlus-II 12/3000
• Cerbo GX (updated to latest firmware)
• ET112 grid meter on shore power hookup
• Fogstar Drift 200Ah lithium

When I'm on hook-up at a site, the VRM dashboard is showing my AC loads lumped in with what it's calling "Essential loads" — but I haven't configured anything as essential. No ESS assistant running or anything like that. The display just seems to be labelling things wrong, or maybe pulling data from the wrong source?

It's not breaking anything functionally, inverter charges and switches over fine, but the monitoring is off which makes it harder to track actual consumption. Kind of defeats the point of having the ET112 in there.

Anyone seen this on a Cerbo specifically? I know there were some display quirks flagged in the v3.x releases but couldn't find anything solid in the Victron community forums about this exact labelling issue.

Worth raising a ticket with Victron or just wait for the next firmware drop?

Also curious whether anyone running an Ekrano GX instead has the same problem — wondering if it's a Venus OS thing rather than hardware specific.

@RobJones85 this is a known quirk with the Cerbo GX firmware when ESS is configured alongside a MultiPlus-II. The "Essential Loads" label only appears correctly when you've got a proper AC-coupled or DC-coupled PV source registered in the system. Without it, the GX sometimes defaults to showing everything under "AC Loads" regardless of whether it's on the critical output or not.

Check your ESS settings in VRM — specifically whether "Has DC system" is ticked correctly. Also worth confirming you're on the latest firmware (v3.x series). Victron pushed a fix for some display labelling issues a while back.

If you're on an older image, flash it via the SD card method rather than OTA — more reliable in my experience with the Cerbo.

Seen this exact thing on my cabin setup. Worth checking if you've got the AC Input current limit set correctly in VEConfigure — an incorrect value there can confuse what the Cerbo classifies as "essential" vs general AC loads on the display.

Also, which firmware version are you on? There was a patch a few releases back that specifically addressed ESS load labelling oddities. If you're not on the latest Venus OS, that'd be my first port of call before diving deeper.

@RayWatson81 makes a fair point about the ESS quirk, but in my experience it's often a config issue rather than a pure firmware bug — ruled that out on my own system before assuming the worst.

Hey @RobJones85, had this same headache on my narrowboat setup last spring. One thing neither @RayWatson81 nor @EmmaEdwards82 have mentioned — check your Grid meter settings in the Cerbo's ESS menu. If it's set to "External meter" but you're not actually running one, the GX can get confused about what's genuinely being consumed on AC-in versus what's inverter-fed, and start labelling loads incorrectly on the dashboard.

Also worth a look at whether your AC-out 1 vs AC-out 2 wiring matches what the MultiPlus-II thinks is connected in VEConfigure. Mislabelled outputs there will absolutely cause the Essential/AC loads display to show nonsense figures.

Try a fresh VRM dashboard reset after correcting those settings — sorted mine right out. What firmware version are you running on the Cerbo? That might narrow it down further.

Good thread. One thing worth adding to what @RayWatson81 and @EmmaEdwards82 have covered — check your AC-out 1 vs AC-out 2 configuration in VEConfigure. If loads on AC-out 2 are appearing under "Essential loads" on the dashboard, that's often a miscategorisation tied to how the MultiPlus-II reports them back to the Cerbo rather than a display bug per se.

I ran into something similar when I wired up EV charging on my static caravan setup — the EVSE was on AC-out 2 and kept showing incorrectly. Corrected itself once I verified the assistant settings in VEConfigure matched the physical wiring.

Also worth confirming you're on firmware v3.00+ — there were specific fixes around load categorisation in that release cycle.