VRM Chart of Charging Sources

Anyone else's VRM portal telling tall tales about their charging sources?

My Cerbo GX is connected to an Orion XS (12V→24V, running into a Fogstar lithium bank at the cabin) and the chart labels the DC-DC charger contribution as "alternator" — which is technically not wrong, but also not exactly right, is it?

Curious whether this is just how Victron categorises any B2B charging on the VRM dashboard, or if there's a config tweak I've missed. The VE.Direct connection is solid and firmware is bang up to date, so it's not a comms issue as far as I can tell.

It's a minor gripe really — everything works — but when you're trying to read historical charts to figure out why the batteries were grumpy on a cloudy week, having a mislabelled source is proper annoying.

Does anyone know if Victron have acknowledged this as a display quirk, or is there a way to rename/reclassify the source in the VRM portal settings? Feels like something that should be a five-minute fix on their end.

Would love to know how others with B2B setups are interpreting their VRM data — especially anyone running a similar cabin or off-grid arrangement rather than a van build.

@Mel1980 the VRM Chart Lab is brilliant but it'll only show your Orion XS as a distinct source if it's connected via VE.Direct or VE.Can — if you've just got it on a VE.Smart network or nothing at all, the Cerbo lumps it into "DC loads/charger" as an aggregate and basically makes up the narrative from there.

Check Settings → System Setup → DC system on your Cerbo — if "Has DC system" is ticked without proper monitoring, you're essentially asking VRM to guess, and it guesses badly.

The fix is either a SmartShunt on the DC bus or making sure your Orion XS is properly cabled to a VE.Direct port rather than relying on Bluetooth alone — Bluetooth is for your phone's entertainment, not serious monitoring.

@OldSailor is right about VE.Direct being the key, but worth adding — the Orion XS does have VE.Direct built in, so @Mel1980 you shouldn't need any adapters or converters. Just a straight cable run to the Cerbo.

That said, check your VRM dashboard settings — sometimes the Orion shows up under "DC System" rather than as a named source, which skews the chart completely and makes it look like your loads are higher than they actually are. Drove me mad on my static van setup for weeks before I realised what was happening.

Also double-check the Orion is set to the correct battery profile for the Fogstar cells. If it's running a generic lithium curve it might not be playing nicely with the charge voltage thresholds, which could explain any weirdness you're seeing in the data.

@DODGuy that's really useful to know the Orion XS has VE.Direct built in — I've been wondering about this exact setup for my narrowboat actually. I've got a Cerbo GX already running my solar via a Victron MPPT, and I was considering adding an Orion XS for alternator charging into my Fogstar lithium bank.

Quick question though — if both the MPPT and the Orion XS are connected via VE.Direct, will the VRM Chart Lab show them as separate charging sources with individual power figures? Or does it lump DC sources together somehow? That distinction really matters when I'm trying to work out whether my alternator is actually contributing meaningfully versus just the solar doing all the heavy lifting.

@Mel1980 one thing nobody's mentioned yet — even with VE.Direct connected and the Orion XS showing up properly in VRM, the Chart Lab scaling can make your DC-DC contribution look negligible if your solar array is doing serious work simultaneously. Worth splitting your view by source rather than stacking them, otherwise you'll spend ages convinced the Orion isn't doing anything when it's actually pushing 20A into the bank perfectly fine.

Also check your Cerbo firmware is current. Had a period last winter where my Orion XS was connected, recognised, but reporting zero amps intermittently — turned out to be a firmware mismatch rather than anything wrong with the wiring or VE.Direct cable. Updated the Cerbo and it sorted itself immediately. Wasted two days poking around the installation before I bothered checking the obvious.

@SolarJunkie raises something worth expanding on — that aggregation quirk in VRM has caught me out too. Running an Orion XS into a 24V Fogstar bank in my shepherd's hut, I noticed VRM was lumping DC-DC input under "DC Power" rather than breaking it out cleanly as a named source in the chart lab, even with VE.Direct properly connected and the unit showing up fine in the device list.

The fix that worked for me: ensure your Cerbo GX firmware is fully up to date and check that the Orion XS is set to the correct "charger" role rather than "converter" in VictronConnect — that role assignment directly affects how VRM categorises and labels the data stream in chart lab views.