Shunt not showing Watt in device overview

Been meaning to raise this for a while actually.

Running a Victron SmartShunt on my static caravan setup and I've noticed the same gap — you get voltage and current displayed fine in the device overview, but no calculated wattage. Seems like an odd omission given that the MPPT controllers and inverters all show power figures directly.

I get that it's simple maths (V × A), but that's not really the point is it. When you're glancing at the overview on VRM or the Cerbo screen, you want everything readable at a glance without having to do mental arithmetic. Especially useful when you're trying to work out at a quick look whether your loads are sustainable overnight.

I've seen some folk work around it by setting up custom widgets on VRM dashboards, which does help, but it feels like a bodge rather than a proper solution.

Anyone found a cleaner way to get watts showing directly from the shunt in the device list?

Also curious whether this is a firmware limitation or just a deliberate UI choice by Victron. If it's the latter, seems worth pushing back on — there are plenty of threads on the Victron community forum making the same request, so clearly it's not just us.

Would be useful for anyone running a shunt as their primary battery monitor without a full MPPT or inverter in the chain — shepherds hut builds, garden offices, that sort of thing where the setup is simpler but you still want clean data.

@RetiredPlumber this is a known quirk with the SmartShunt specifically — it doesn't calculate and broadcast watts as a standalone value over Bluetooth in the device overview screen. The shunt reports voltage and current separately, and the VictronConnect app just doesn't multiply them into a displayed watt figure there.

Your options:

• GX device (Cerbo GX, Venus GX etc.) — this aggregates the data and will show watts in the VRM portal and touchscreen overview
• Victron BMV-712 instead — slightly different implementation, same gap sadly
• Calculate manually (V × A = W) — obvious but tedious

On my garden office setup I solved this by running a Cerbo GX, which pulls everything together properly. Overkill for a static caravan perhaps, but the VRM remote monitoring alone is worth it if you're not always on site.

Interesting one this — does anyone know if this changes at all when the SmartShunt is connected through a Cerbo GX? I'm looking at adding one to my setup anyway for the EV charging monitoring, and wondering whether the GX unit does the watt calculation itself from the voltage/current data and then displays it properly in the overview?

Also curious whether Fogstar batteries with their built-in BMS expose watt data differently over the VE.Can network compared to a standalone shunt arrangement — might be worth factoring in when @RetiredPlumber is thinking about upgrades.

Is there a workaround in the meantime using the VRM portal perhaps? I've noticed it seems to pull calculated values that don't always match what shows locally on devices.

@Cleggy yes, connecting through a Cerbo GX does help here actually. The Cerbo pulls the voltage and current data from the shunt and calculates the watt figure itself, displaying it properly in the VRM portal and on a GX Touch screen if you've got one. So you do get your power readings, just not directly from the shunt itself broadcasting them natively.

@RetiredPlumber for a static caravan setup, if you're not running a Cerbo already, it might be worth considering one — especially if you want proper historical logging of your power consumption. Alternatively, the Victron app on Bluetooth will sometimes show calculated watts depending on firmware version, so worth checking you're on the latest. What firmware are you running on the shunt currently?

@ThistleRunner that matches what I found when I wired my SmartShunt into the Cerbo on my cabin setup. Worth noting though — the watt figure you then see on the VRM dashboard is essentially the portal doing the maths server-side, so if your connection drops you lose that calculated display temporarily. Caught me out once when I was troubleshooting what I thought was a battery fault, turned out I was just staring at stale data.

For anyone without a Cerbo in the chain, the Victron app itself will show watts if you dig into the live data view rather than the device overview tile — the overview tile just seems to be a known cosmetic limitation rather than a deeper measurement gap.

@OffGridTerry raises a fair point — worth adding that Victron's own GX Touch 50 display also handles this nicely if you're already committed to the Victron ecosystem, showing calculated watts properly without any faffing about.

On the SmartShunt alone via Bluetooth, the Victron Connect app does actually show watts on the main battery screen — it's just the device overview tile that's stingy with the info, which is a firmware/UI quirk rather than a hardware limitation.

Raised it with Victron's community forum yonks ago and the general consensus was: it's a display design choice, not a bug — though whether that's good design is another debate entirely 😄

For what it's worth, my narrowboat setup with a Cerbo GX shows everything beautifully — watts, SOC, the lot — so that route is worth the extra outlay if you're expanding anyway.