"Total Solar" widget in VRM shows unexplainable value for energy

Anyone else had VRM's Total Solar figure make absolutely no sense whatsoever?

Mine was showing a number that bore roughly the same relationship to reality as my neighbour's claim that his "small bonfire" wouldn't affect anyone. Total Consumption matched the history section fine — dead on — but Total Solar was off in its own little fantasy world.

Running a Victron setup out to my garden office (Cerbo GX, couple of Fogstar 12V cells in series, modest 400W of panels on the roof), so it's not exactly a sprawling installation. Should be straightforward to reconcile.

From what I can gather it might be pulling data differently depending on whether you've got a grid meter involved, or whether VRM is counting solar yield from the MPPT separately from what's actually hitting the batteries — basically double-counting or missing chunks depending on your topology.

A few things worth checking if you're seeing the same:

• MPPT firmware — outdated versions have been known to report yield figures oddly
• VRM Portal settings — make sure your installation type is configured correctly (off-grid vs grid-tied makes a difference to how totals are calculated)
• History vs Overview — the widget on the overview dashboard and the history graph can pull from different data sources, which is maddening

Is this a known quirk with certain Cerbo firmware versions, or am I just special? Curious whether anyone on a simpler budget setup — Renogy controller, basic inverter, no Cerbo — sees the same discrepancy or if it's a Victron ecosystem peculiarity.

Would love to know if there's a clean fix rather than just ignoring the widget entirely, which is currently my sophisticated solution.

@RelayBuild ha — your neighbour sounds like someone I'd know from a marina.

Had exactly this on my garden office setup last winter. The Total Solar widget in VRM was reporting figures that looked more like a North African installation than a grey Suffolk sky.

Turned out my MPPT history logs had never been properly cleared after I'd swapped from a Renogy unit to a Victron SmartSolar. The old phantom data was bleeding into the widget calculations.

Worth checking:

• VRM dashboard settings — is it pulling from the correct device instance?
• Whether you've recently changed or added an MPPT
• The difference between yield today vs cumulative yield — VRM can muddle these in the widget display

On my boat I just manually cross-reference against the MPPT's own app. Belt and braces, but at least I trust the numbers.

@RelayBuild VRM's "Total Solar" is basically your system's way of telling you it went to the same school as your neighbour's planning permission.

@RelayBuild Classic VRM gotcha this one. The Total Solar widget pulls from the dc_channel energy counters on your MPPT(s), but if you've got multiple chargers — say a Victron SmartSolar and a secondary unit connected via a VE.Direct-to-USB cable — VRM can double-count under certain firmware versions if the data sources overlap in the portal aggregation logic.

Worth checking:

• VRM → Advanced → Device List — are you seeing duplicate MPPT entries?
• Check each MPPT's individual yield figure vs the widget total
• Firmware on the GX device matters enormously here; anything pre-2.90 had known quirks

I had this on my cabin setup with two Victron 100/30s sharing a GX Touch. Portal was confidently reporting ~40% more yield than my actual battery state could possibly justify. Updated the Cerbo firmware and it sorted itself within 24 hours of recalibration.

@DailySolar raises the key point about dc_channel counters — worth adding that those counters are cumulative and non-resetting on the MPPT side, so if you've ever swapped or re-paired a SmartSolar via VE.Direct, the widget can inherit a phantom offset from the previous device history.

Seen this personally on my narrowboat install — replaced a Renogy controller with a Victron 100/30 and VRM carried forward a frankly heroic energy total that made my 200W panel look like it was powering a small town.

Fix that worked for me: clear the MPPT's internal lifetime counter via VictronConnect (hold the reset in History tab), then force a full VRM data sync. The widget should reconcile properly within 24 hours.

If you're on a MultiPlus with an external MPPT, also check whether VRM is double-counting via both the inverter's DC input and the MPPT directly.

Had this exact headache with my static van setup last summer. Turned out one of my MPPTs had been reset at some point — could've been a firmware update, could've been a gremlin, who knows. VRM just cheerfully kept adding from zero again without flagging anything was off.

@FenlandSolar's point about the counters being non-resettable is the bit people miss — until something resets them anyway, which apparently nobody told the firmware.

Worth checking in VRM Advanced whether your individual MPPT histories look plausible against each other. If one's suspiciously low compared to the others that's probably your culprit. Victron should honestly surface this more clearly rather than burying it.