Nullast phoenix inverter smart 24/1600 te hoog

Been scratching my head over something similar with my Victron Phoenix 24/1600 and thought it worth raising here.

According to the spec sheet, idle/no-load draw should sit around 9W. Reasonable enough — I accepted that when I sized my battery bank. Running a 200Ah Fogstar Drift 24V setup in the motorhome, every watt of parasitic drain matters, especially on a cloudy week parked up in the Dales.

But when I actually clipped my clamp meter on and did the maths — voltage multiplied by measured current — I was reading closer to 22–24W at no load. That's more than double what Victron publishes.

Now, I know there's a question of how you measure it. AC-side measurement vs DC-side, power factor weirdness on inverters, cheap clamp meters lying to you... I've been down that rabbit hole. But even accounting for some measurement slop, something feels off.

A few things I'm wondering:

• Is anyone else seeing this with the Smart 24/1600 specifically, or the 12V version?
• Does the Victron Connect app report a figure that matches your independent measurement, or does it flatter the unit?
• Could firmware version affect idle consumption? Mine hasn't been updated recently.

I've had a dig through the Victron community forums but most threads are inconclusive or very old. Feels like one of those specs that was measured under ideal lab conditions that don't quite translate to real-world installs.

Would love to hear from anyone who's done a proper DC-side watt-hour measurement over a few hours. That'd be the definitive test, really.

@PennineCamper that thread title's in Dutch but your wallet pain is universal 😄

Worth checking whether your idle draw is actually being measured at the inverter terminals rather than further back — cable resistance eats voltage and skews your wattage readings something rotten.

On my boat setup I found the Victron Phoenix was drawing closer to 13–15W idle once I accounted for the internal fan cycling and the VE.Direct comms chip staying awake. Perfectly normal, just not what the spec sheet's headline figure implies.

The 9W figure is essentially a best case — 25°C ambient, fully charged battery, no comms active. Real world's a different beast entirely.

If you're seeing significantly more than 15W at idle, I'd suspect either a marginal connection causing resistive heating or the unit running warm and working harder than it should.

@PennineCamper mine was doing similar - ended up being the search mode not actually kicking in properly. Worth enabling PowerAssist search mode if you haven't, drops idle right down.

Also check your firmware. Victron pushed an update a while back that sorted some standby draw issues on the Phoenix range.

That said, 9W is the optimistic figure. Real-world on my 24V setup it's closer to 12-15W depending on temperature and what's loosely connected downstream. Cold nights in the van make it worse for some reason.

Is yours the Smart version with bluetooth? Pull it up on VictronConnect and watch the actual power draw live - much easier than guessing.

Been having almost identical grief with mine in the van. Quick question for anyone who's dug into this — does the search mode threshold matter much in practice? Like, what wattage load actually triggers it to wake up reliably?

Also wondering if ambient temperature in the van plays any role. My Phoenix lives in the rear cupboard and it gets properly cold overnight here in winter — not sure if that affects the idle draw figures quoted in the spec sheet, which I'd assume are measured at some standard lab temperature.

@ZFS_OffGrid did you change anything in the VictronConnect settings when you sorted the search mode issue, or was it a firmware thing? I've got mine on the latest but haven't really dug into the thresholds properly.

@TorChild great question — I'm curious about that too actually! Do you find search mode causes issues with certain loads? I tried enabling it on my narrowboat setup and some of my smaller 12V converters were struggling to "wake" the inverter properly.

Also wondering — has anyone actually measured idle draw with a proper clamp meter rather than just reading the Victron app? I'm questioning whether the VE.Direct data is fully accurate at those low wattages. My Fogstar battery monitor and the Victron readings rarely agree at sub-20W draws.

@ZFS_OffGrid — when you say search mode wasn't kicking in "properly," was that a firmware thing or a settings threshold issue? I've been going back and forth on the detection sensitivity setting and can't decide where to land on it.