OK, so i thought i knew what i was doing, but apparently not. Please help me in victron land

by BigAl · 1 month ago 47 views 4 replies
BigAl
BigAl
Active Member
13 posts
thumb_up 2 likes
Joined Jan 2025
1 month ago
#17088

Right, so I'm going to hold my hands up here and admit I've gone down a rabbit hole I wasn't expecting with my static caravan setup.

Been running a fairly straightforward Victron system for about 18 months — Multiplus-II, SmartSolar MPPT, and a bank of Fogstar Drift 100Ah LiFePO4s. All ticking along nicely. Or so I thought.

Started trying to configure the DVCC settings properly in VictronConnect and now I'm genuinely not sure if what I had "working" was actually configured correctly, or just functioning despite itself, if that makes sense.

Specifically around the charge current limits — I've got the BMS talking to the Cerbo GX via VE.Can, and I thought DVCC would then automatically hand off charge control to the BMS. But looking at it more carefully I'm not convinced that's what's actually happening. The MPPT seems to be ignoring the CCL from the BMS entirely on sunny days, pushing more current than the BMS is requesting.

A few questions for those who know Victron better than I clearly do:

  • Does DVCC SVS/SCS need to be enabled or disabled for this to work properly? I've seen conflicting advice.
  • Is there a known issue with certain Fogstar BMS firmware versions not playing nicely with the Cerbo?
  • Should the charge voltage on the MPPT be set to "default" and left entirely to DVCC, or does it still need configuring manually?

Had a good hunt through the Victron community forums but half the threads are years old and things seem to have changed with recent firmware updates.

Anyone been through this? Would genuinely appreciate some pointers before I start randomly toggling settings

Moor Lee
Moor Lee
Regular
53 posts
thumb_up 27 likes
Joined Jul 2023
1 month ago
#17110

@BigAl mate, welcome to the club — we've got t-shirts but nobody can figure out how to configure the Victron display to show the logo properly 😄

Seriously though, "fairly straightforward Victron system" is an oxymoron on par with "quick IKEA job." The moment you plug in that first MPPT you've

Nessa55
Nessa55
Member
9 posts
Joined Apr 2025
1 month ago
#17139

Hey @BigAl, don't worry, Victron's learning curve is genuinely steep at first but it clicks eventually! The key thing I'd say is get yourself on VictronConnect via Bluetooth if you haven't already — it makes poking around in the settings so much more accessible than wrestling with the head unit. Also worth joining the official Victron Community forum alongside this one, as there's a searchable archive of pretty much every configuration headache imaginable.

That said, could you tell us a bit more about what's actually gone wrong? Is it a BMS communication issue, SOC readings going haywire, or something else entirely? Static caravan setups can have their own quirks depending on how the shore power and solar are interacting. The more detail you give us the better — what batteries are you running with it?

Midge
Midge
Active Member
12 posts
thumb_up 7 likes
Joined Jun 2024
1 month ago
#17165

@BigAl the rabbit hole is real — I spent three weeks convinced my Multiplus was faulty when it turned out I'd just not set the correct battery preset 😅

One thing that genuinely helped me was keeping a little notebook of every change I made in VE.Configure. Sounds old-fashioned but when something goes wrong at midnight on a narrowboat you'll thank yourself for it.

Also — which specific bit has got you confused? Victron's ecosystem is enormous and "not working as expected" could mean about forty different things. Is it the DVCC settings? ESS vs non-ESS mode? Battery comms?

Post your setup specs (inverter model, BMS type, whether you're using VE.Bus, VE.Direct or CAN) and someone here will almost certainly have hit the exact same wall. This forum has saved me more than once.

Border Cruiser
Border Cruiser
Member
6 posts
Joined Nov 2024
1 month ago
#17236

@BigAl ha, you've come to the right place! One thing nobody mentioned yet — before anything else, make sure you've got VictronConnect or Venus OS (if you've got a GX device) showing you the actual raw data rather than trying to interpret the LED blink codes. Half the confusion in early Victron setups comes from people debugging blind.

Also worth knowing: the Victron community forum online is genuinely excellent for searching specific error codes, but post your actual setup details here too — MPPT size, battery type, inverter model — and we can probably save you a lot of time. Static caravan setups have some quirks around earthing and shore power switching that catch people out regularly.

What's the specific issue you're seeing? 😄

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