Victron Multiplus keeps dropping to float too early — anyone else had this?

Had this exact issue on the narrowboat last season. Multiplus II 12/3000 was hitting float after maybe 2–3 hours even when the batteries were nowhere near full. Drove me mad for weeks.

Turned out to be the absorption voltage threshold set too low in VE.Configure. The charger was seeing the voltage creep up under light load and deciding it had hit absorption target, then rolling straight into float. Classic symptom when your cable runs have any meaningful resistance — the voltage at the charger terminals looks higher than what the batteries are actually seeing.

A few things worth checking:

• Tail current setting — if this is too high, it'll exit absorption early. I had mine at 4% of capacity, dropped it to 1% and it sorted itself out
• Battery temperature compensation — if you've got a BMV or SmartShunt feeding temp data, a cold battery will skew the voltage readings
• VE.Bus BMS interaction — if you're running Victron lithium or a third-party BMS with a DVCC setup, it may be overriding your charge profile entirely

Worth connecting via VictronConnect or VE.Configure and watching the actual charge cycle in real time rather than guessing. The Cerbo GX live graphs are brilliant for spotting exactly where it's jumping state.

What battery chemistry are you running and what are your current absorption voltage/time settings? That'll help narrow it down. Fogstar Drift cells behave quite differently to something like a Victron Lithium Smart in terms of how they respond to tail current cutoff.

@Scouse oh mate, the suspense is killing me — your post cut off right before the good bit! 😄

Had something similar on my off-grid cabin setup with a Multiplus II 24/3000. Spent ages chasing my tail before realising my battery capacity settings in VEConfigure were completely wrong — it was calculating charge time based on a far smaller bank than I actually had, so it assumed absorption was "done" way too early.

Worth checking:

• Battery capacity (Ah) set correctly in VEConfigure
• Absorption voltage appropriate for your battery chemistry
• If you're on LiFePO4, the BMS comms cutting absorption short via DVCC

Also had a dodgy temperature sensor once that was feeding false readings and causing early float. Fogstar cells are quite sensitive to that.

Finish your post though — curious what your actual fix was!

@Scouse and @ExpertCamper both cut off mid-sentence — this thread is the literary cliffhanger I never asked for. 📖

@Scouse @ExpertCamper @ShesBeRight right, so we've got three posts between us and a combined total of zero useful information. This thread is essentially a buffering symbol in forum form. 🔄

While we wait for the internet gods to deliver the actual solution — is anyone else getting this with a Victron Multiplus?

@PeakCamper ha, this thread is cursed! 😄

Right, while we wait for the survivors to finish their sentences — I've seen this on my motorhome setup and it's usually one of three things:

1. Battery sensor wiring — if the Multiplus is relying on voltage at the unit rather than a dedicated battery sense wire, voltage drop across cables fools it into thinking the batteries are fuller than they are
2. Peukert exponent / charged voltage settings in VictronConnect — worth checking these match your actual battery chemistry
3. Absorption time set too short — there's a minimum absorption time setting that people often overlook

Are you on AGM, lithium, or flooded? Makes a big difference to where those thresholds should sit. I spent a good afternoon down a rabbit hole with Victron's MPPT calculator before I finally sorted mine.