Nieuw Victron 3-fase systeem en onduidelijke waardes op VRM portal

Anyone else had that moment staring at VRM portal where the Discharging figure and the AC Load figure are doing completely different things and you're stood there like a confused labrador?

Running a three-phase Victron setup across my shepherds hut conversion (yes, three-phase is overkill, yes I regret nothing) and the numbers on the dashboard occasionally tell what can only be described as competing narratives.

From what I've pieced together:

• Discharging = what the battery is actually pushing out
• AC Load = what your inverter reckons is being consumed downstream
• The gap between them is losses, transformer inefficiency, and probably the ghost of bad wiring decisions past

The Multi-RS units can be particularly theatrical about this on VRM — especially when one phase is doing more heavy lifting than the others. Victron's own forums suggest it's often down to how the ET112 or ET340 meter is positioned in the circuit, and whether your system assistant is correctly configured for phase compensation.

Worth checking your ESS Assistant settings if the discrepancy is large — mine was showing phantom loads for weeks because I'd not set the grid setpoint correctly.

Anyone else running three-phase off-grid (or island mode) in the UK and had similar VRM gremlins? Curious whether it's more pronounced with Fogstar or CATL based battery setups versus the official Victron Lynx stack — I've a feeling the BMS comms might be muddying the telemetry somewhat.

Pub quiz question: at what point does monitoring your energy system consume more energy than the system saves? 🤔

SilverRanger | Posts: 847 | Location: Cumbria

@LakelandExplorer Ha, the confused labrador description is painfully accurate 😄

Worth remembering that Discharging on VRM represents the DC-side power flow from your batteries, whilst AC Load is what's actually being consumed on the AC bus. In a 3-phase setup especially, you'll often see discrepancies because inverter losses, DC loads, and any DC-coupled solar aren't reflected the same way in both figures.

Check whether you've got any significant DC loads running — those will show in the Discharging figure but won't appear under AC Load at all.

Also worth looking at your DVCC settings if you're running a mix of Victron kit; sometimes the reporting gets a bit wonky until everything's communicating properly through the Cerbo.

What's your setup — MultiPlus IIs or Quattros?

@LakelandExplorer mate the confused labrador is exactly it 😂

Worth checking whether your VRM dashboard is showing DC-coupled loads separately — my little static caravan setup had me baffled for weeks because the solar was feeding loads before it even hit the Victron, so the AC load figure was basically lying to my face.

Check your ESS assistant settings too. Sometimes the portal's doing maths you didn't consent to.

Also — are you on three-phase with unbalanced loads? Because that'll throw the displayed totals right off. The portal sometimes picks a favourite phase and reports that like it's the whole story. Classic Victron behaviour, brilliant kit but the VRM occasionally needs a stern talking-to.

@LakelandExplorer the confused labrador phase is basically a rite of passage with Victron kit 😂

Worth knowing — on a 3-phase system, VRM can show you per-phase AC loads that look wildly different to the combined discharge figure because one's measuring at the inverter DC side and the other's totalling AC

Right so this happened to me when I first got my Multiplus-II set up on the static caravan — I was convinced the whole system was lying to me 😅

The penny finally dropped when I realised VRM was showing DC-coupled losses and inverter efficiency separately from the actual AC load figure. They're measuring at different points in the chain.

@LakelandExplorer — have a poke around in VRM → Advanced → Widget Library and add the individual phase widgets. Once you can see L1, L2, L3 broken out properly rather than the summary dashboard, the numbers suddenly start telling a coherent story.

Also worth checking your DVCC settings in Venus OS — had mine misconfigured and it was basically confusing the reporting layer completely. Fogstar cells behaving perfectly, numbers looking chaotic. Drove me absolutely round the bend before someone here pointed me at that setting!

@CamperJackie snap — had almost exactly the same panic with my static caravan setup when I first got the Multiplus-II talking to VRM!

Quick question for the thread though — does this confusion get worse on a 3-phase system like the OP's? I'm only single-phase but I'm toying with whether to go 3-phase for a garden office build I'm planning. Worried I'd spend the first three months just staring at graphs trying to work out which phase is doing what 😅

Is there a specific VRM widget or dashboard layout that makes 3-phase readings actually readable? I've seen some setups where people pin custom widgets but never quite understood which ones are most useful for at-a-glance monitoring.