VE Direct Inverter 12/1600 220v. Salta alarma de sobrecarga con 380w

Been having a weird one with my Victron 12/1600 in the garden office and wondered if anyone else has hit this.

Running it off a 200Ah Fogstar Drift LiFePO4, short cable run (about 50cm of 35mm²), everything looks tidy on paper. But the overload alarm trips when I put a load on that shouldn't be anywhere near the limit — we're talking a small sandwich toaster, maybe 650-700W peak.

The 12/1600 is rated for 1600VA continuous, so 700W should be well within its comfort zone. Yet it's crying about it.

Few things I've already checked:

• Battery connections tight and clean
• VE.Direct showing no obvious faults in the app
• Tried it in both On and ECO mode — ECO mode is obviously worse for inductive/resistive loads with a spike

My suspicion is the startup surge on the toaster's element catches it out, even if steady-state draw is fine. Some appliances pull 2-3x rated wattage for a split second.

Has anyone:

1. Adjusted the overload trip sensitivity via VictronConnect?
2. Noticed the 12v platform struggling more than 24v for this kind of load?

Part of me wonders if bumping to a 24v system would just make life easier — I'm planning a narrowboat setup eventually anyway, and 24v seems more sensible at that scale.

Curious what others are seeing. Anyone else running the 12/1600 on LiFePO4 hit similar quirks?

@EdCampbell84 Classic Victron gotcha this one. The 12/1600 has a peak power threshold that's surprisingly touchy — even though 380W looks well within the 1600VA rating, it's the instantaneous surge that's triggering it, not your steady-state draw.

Few things worth checking:

• What's the load? Motor-driven kit (pumps, compressors, even some laser printers) can pull 3-5x nameplate on startup
• Battery voltage under load — if your Fogstar is dipping below ~11.5V momentarily, the inverter sees that as an overload condition
• Check your VE.Direct or VictronConnect app for the exact fault code — there's a difference between overload and low voltage shutdown

With 35mm² over 50cm you shouldn't have cable losses causing drama. I'd hook up a battery monitor (Victron BMV or similar) and watch what voltage actually does when the fault triggers.

@EdCampbell84 worth checking your low voltage cutoff settings in the VEConfigure tool — LiFePO4 sits at a flatter discharge curve than lead acid and sometimes the default thresholds are calibrated expecting a bit more voltage sag under load. If the BMS is momentarily drooping even slightly, the inverter can interpret that as an overload condition rather than a battery issue.

Also — what's your Fogstar set to for discharge rate? Some of the Drift cells have conservative BMS defaults out of the box. I had something similar in my shepherd's hut setup before I tweaked the BMS parameters. 380W really shouldn't be touching the 12/1600's limits on paper, so it does smell like a voltage issue rather than a genuine overload.

Try logging via VRM during the fault if you can — the graphs will show you exactly what's happening at the moment of alarm.

@EdCampbell84 — 380W on a 12V nominal system is pulling roughly 31-32A continuous from your battery. That sounds fine on paper, but here's the pedantic bit everyone misses: your inverter sees that as 380W ÷ ~90% efficiency ≈ 420W draw, plus whatever parasitic load the unit itself carries.

The 12/1600's overload threshold isn't measured at the AC output — it's measured at the DC input side. Victron's own spec sheet is delightfully vague about this if you don't read the footnotes.

What's actually plugged in? Anything with a motor — even a modest one — will spike well above its rated wattage on startup. My old 12/1200 on the boat used to throw a fit over a desk fan.

Run VE.Direct into VictronConnect and pull the actual waveform history — it'll show you exactly when the spike hit.

@ExmoorNomad is right on the current draw, but the real culprit is usually the inverter's internal temperature sensor triggering early derating rather than a true overload. The 12/1600 drops its continuous rating significantly once the heatsink climbs — and in a garden office with poor ventilation it happens faster than you'd expect.

Also worth checking: what's the actual load profile? 380W average could be masking sharp inrush spikes — a laser printer or small compressor fridge will hammer well above nameplate for 200-400ms. The Victron won't distinguish between sustained and transient overload cleanly at this power level.

Pull the VE.Bus status log if you have a USB-to-VE.Direct cable handy — it'll timestamp the fault and you can correlate it directly against whatever was running. Takes the guesswork out entirely.