Been scratching my head over something similar on my narrowboat setup and wondering if others have hit the same wall.
Running a Victron SmartSolar 100/20 and a 75/15 both talking to a Cerbo GX via VE.Direct, with a SmartShunt 500A doing the battery monitoring. Works beautifully for visibility — I can see everything on VRM from my phone while I'm tied up at a marina miles away.
The bit that's bothering me though: the MPPTs are essentially doing their own thing. They're visible to the Cerbo, but not truly under its command in the way I'd expect from a "smart" system. No external control mode, no proper DVCC coordination kicking in the way the documentation implies it should.
I've got a Fogstar Drift 200Ah LiFePO4 as my house bank, and ideally the whole system would be talking in one language — Cerbo orchestrating charge limits based on the shunt's state of charge readings. In practice it feels more like the Cerbo is just watching rather than managing.
A few questions for the forum:
- Has anyone actually got proper DVCC external control working reliably across multiple MPPTs?
- Does it matter whether you're on VE.Direct vs VE.Smart networking for this to behave correctly?
- Anyone running an Orion XS into this mix — does adding that change how the Cerbo handles system control?
Narrowboat life means I can't always be hands-on with the kit, so getting the automation right really matters. Curious whether this is a firmware thing, a settings thing, or just me expecting too much from the system.
