₦airaland Forum

kiekie1:
Victron multiplus up for grab!!

Victron multiplus compact 700 watt 24v pure sinewave wall mount inverter .

Feature:
1600w peak power !
3 - 10w idle power consumption !!

Condition: Neatly used and functional.

Location: Lagos mainland

Brand new rate: $904

Shoot me a reasonable offer & its yours


Contact,
Smartcell global services
CALL:: 081-350-31951
WHATSAPP::: http://.us/w/?c=a46ea5

lol, oga why you no talk the price in Naira straight now

Hi Guys,

Does anyone here stock VE Direct USB cables?

isangjohnson:
[quote author=NiyiOmoIyunade

Found your post very informative and educative.
Yea, you still have up to date collective memory of my entire setup. Swapping my felicity inverter and Morningstar Mppt for victron was my future designed plan, if victron will still maintain the lead then.

Currently, I'm working on how to control the existing system online and maintain/control the charging profile of the battery bank with my oversized pv.

Since Raspberry Pi could capture data from my felicity inverter via serial, Mppt via modbus TCP and BMV via vebus, then I've less worries as regards monitoring.
SKILLED HAND for the integration of central monitoring dashboard is what I may not get in Akwa Ibom State. Please, I may appreciate recommendations from the neighbouring states.
All I currently need is satisfaction of my investment.

what do you want to control, if it's just charging, your CC is more than sufficient to regulate the amps for your battery. If you are planning something more complicated we can work together to figure it out if you have time. I'm currently tinkering with home assistant(beginner level home automation stuff, but i'm focused more on monitoring my appliances power consumption) so I am having to spend time in the Rpi world. Happy to have a partner to share the suffering with

NiyiOmoIyunade:
You need a GX device or Raspberry Pi or other PC running Venus OS. So the CCGX, VenusGX, CerboGX will all work.

The charge limit done via DVCC from a GX device is specific to battery charging - the GX will keep instructing the CCs how much power to allow to pass per time - just enough power to service loads and keep the battery amps where you want them to be.

Whereas if you set a charge limit at the CC, that is a global amps limit - you are simply speccing the max amps that the CC will allow to pass through itself for both battery charging and loads

Thanks a million, you just gave me the ginger to read it up and I think I will try the Rpi with Venus OS, I have a spare pi I can dedicate to this. Was almost going the cerbo route.

mennnn what are your rates? I need to spend an hour with you, your expose on grounding is top tier stuff.

NiyiOmoIyunade:
Sometimes too much knowledge can be a burden

The minimum ideal design scenario for a lead acid battery is 50% DoD and then size the panels to be able to replenish the spent batteries within 1 average solar day whilst leaving enough headroom for day time loads.

One issue with basic charge controllers is that they try to pass through the max possible solar charge to the batteries until absorb stage is reached - better SCC designs allow you to limit the battery charge amps specifically e.g Victron - thus I could have a 10kW array on a relatively small battery bank and allocate say 2kW to battery charging while the balance of available PV is used for day time loads.

With this one get the best of two worlds as you can size your theoretical FLA battery lean coupled with a huge solar array and yet not overcharge the battery (max charge current set) while at thesame time having enough PV to run large daytime loads.

In the end, it is a question of proper system design and leveraging available tech to best effect.

See below an example where Victron's DVCC is used to enforce a roughly 10kw battery charge limit (0.25C) on a 38kWh Pylontech bank - the PV array is sized at 18kW

to do all this you need to have a cerbo right? or can you limit battery charging amps from the CC settings?

Barezzi:
How mush?
I am finally ready to embrace Lithium.

@Barezzi
Sent you an email, been meaning to reach out to ask about your setup, do you still use the voltage controlled switches?

earthrealm:
280ah brand new eve cells ---- 100k
230ah brand new eve cells ---- 80k
250amp daly bms 16s 48v --------130k
120amp daly bms 8s 24v -------- pm

Top balancing ----- free for nairalanders.
16 pieces M6 bms ring terminals....free.
Customized aluminium box case----- optional /100k

You can use hdf or mdf wood and design a decent box.

Diy dey sweet, you are sure, the pack is full capacity, not fake capacity as felicity, yohako and co. Also easy to t/shoot, take apart and rebuild if necessary

Netotse : cc

Can I see pictures of the AL box? Please have mercy on a brother na...this price is looking dangerous

earthrealm:
I hv brand new eve 280ah cells for sale.
250amp 48v 16s daly smart bms with bluetooth dongle. If you are ready to put in some work, get your hands dirty build a case and assemble the pack
you can save yourself some extra money , .

I could help you top balance the cells b4 sending out

Thanks a million, I'm DIY'ed out at the moment, let me look for someone to help. I will reach out of it works out.

@house
Please is there anyone that builds LiFePo4 battery packs with Eve cells? Looking to upgrade my battery bank to 48V, 280ah.

NiyiOmoIyunade:
I believe you and I discussef this offline.

Once a device/circuit sees 220v across Live and Neutral you are good to go - that the power source is split phase should not be an issue. You can test this with an el cheapo relay and see that it switches with no trouble off the inverter split phase AC out.

The real issue here is likely faulty isolation of the neutral wires with the use of common neutral bus for Mains and Inverter at either the DB or transfer switch - you need to setup such that inverter output neutrals feed the inverter loads directly and totally isolated from mains neutral.

If you wire the loads and main transfer switch correctly you should have no trouble with your ATS switching cleanly.

chief, abeg can you shed more light on this?

mcTrinity:
Same issue with both ATS...

Wrt the second ATS, TOMZN has a disclaimer on Aliexpress saying that it is not to be used with inverters, I believe they have a second version that is compatible with solar + inverters. You can ask @bigbrovar where he got his. It might solve the problem you're facing. Picture attached to this post, notice instead of Generator it has PV/inverter written on it.

Personally I use the one you have shown with my multiplus and don't have any issues.

dollarnaira:
I v msw.

Thanks, I already have a msw and now want to swap it out

dollarnaira:
Psw or msw?

Pure sine wave

Hi guys, I'm looking to buy a 12v, 1kVA inverter for a side project, preferably used, is there anyone looking to sell?

SnamaxShop:
1175VA/12V Eastman Pure sinewave (New) - 62k
1675VA/24V Eastman Pure sinewave (New) - 72K
850VA/12V Eastman Pure sinewave (Old) - 38K

Hello, is there an approved repairer in country for these eastman inverters?

ojeysky:
Okay you are specific on Bluetooth? I pull data from Victron BMV via the USB using solpiplog

There's a distance limitation, I can't have the PI situated close to the BMV.

NiyiOmoIyunade:
There are so many ways and tools to connect to Victron devices to read and write data

Is it that you are unable or unwilling to purchase a VeBus to USB cable? If your Pi is indeed used headless you can easily relocate it close enough to where the BMV is or move the BMV itself since the RJ11 data cable is usually so long. Simply connect the VeBus end of the cable to your BMV or MPPT and the USB end to the Raspberry Pi and you will be along in no time.

Even if the bluetooth protocol and workings were exposed bluetooth is generally a bit of a pain to work with programmatically and can be very unstable.

Moving isn't really an option, I have a zigbee hub connected to the Pi so where I place it is key.

For multiplus there are only two ways I have found: A by cable(specifically MK3, VE direct wont work) or B by bluetooth VE bus smart dongle, both are pricey devices forcing me to ask myself how often I will need to use them (plus the bluetooth dongle cant configure all the settings).

Like you suggested, I can use the BMV to monitor my energy consumption both ways so I only need a MK3 cable if I need to configure the multiplus and frankly I don't have the expertise for all of that configuring

I've decided I will DIY serial-to-wifi connections and use this with the BMV and CC when I have a break at the end of this month.

Thanks for helping me think through this, I really appreciate the help.

if I knew all this before would definitely not have gone for a multiplus sha, maybe a Deye or Growatt.

ojeysky:
Who said so?

Victron themselves "Q1. Why is the Bluetooth API not public?

Making the bluetooth API an official public one would mean that we can’t change it as simply as we can today; and also it means that we’ll get questions about it: bluetooth is not simple. Far more complicated than a serial port.

And then only our developers will be able to answer them: taking away development resources. Hence we chose to not make the Bluetooth API public.
"

Direct quote from their website

Also from the victron community https://community.victronenergy.com/questions/40048/victron-data-capture-via-bluetooth.html

NiyiOmoIyunade:
Are you currently using your Pi with a screen/display? You should get comfortable using the Pi headless (just power cable connected) and that way you can have it close to your CC and BMV while you connect to it remotely (ssh connection through Putty on Windows) and configure away.

You really want to keep the BoM as simple as possible and focus on using what you have on hand vs. acquiring additional gadgets and points of complexity and failure.

For example, I just setup an interfacer for my JBD BMS to talk to my Pi over bluetooth for cell level data. I had the option of purchasing a serial to USB cable or RS485 dongle or even ESP01 serial to wifi but I broke out the Python toolkit to leverage the existing bluetooth built into the BMS - now I can monitor from both phone app and python script running on the Pi - later this week I will integrate Grafana to dashboard the raw output from the BMS.

Thanks Niyi, I already use the Pi headless. The issue with Bluetooth is that the API is closed so you cannot get information from the BMV using bluetooth outside of the App. Victron says it's this way because they have only one developer and having him work on bluetooth would be distracting. Other companies that allow you to connect to their equipment via bluetooth have open APIs so third party programmers can build programs to interact via bluetooth.

In simple english, you cannot connect to a Victron device outside of a victron app because they haven't enabled it. They also don't allow you to use bluetooth to connect on windows so you're limited to ios/Android apps unless you use a cable.

ojeysky:
Try to get the BMV screen as close to your pi as possible since it has a very long cable, I hope that works

Thanks for the advice, sadly it's not possible, I'm reading up on using the ESP8266 for serial to wifi and it looks feasible so I will use a DIY cable connected to an ESP8266 chip to send the data to the Pi.

ojesymsym:
who can refer me to a starter guide for emoncms? The hardware required, integration with home assistant on raspberry pi etc

You can start here

NiyiOmoIyunade:
You may be overcomplicating your needs.

Since you already have a BMV in your system you are able to see power in and out of battery, SoC e.t.c - these parameters are sufficient for basic monitoring and you can easily connect your BMV to an existing Raspberry Pi to put the metrics online (EmonCMS e.t.c)

Are there any specific parameters you wish to see on the Multiplus that will make you need something more elaborate?

I actually want to see just the BMV and the CC, the cable for the multiplus is just so I can change the settings when I want, the idea of having something I don't have control over is doing me somehow.

wrt emoncms and the Pi, the distance between the Pi and the CC/BMV is too long to use USB cable and Bluetooth wont work*
are you aware of any other way to get the data into the Pi?


*From what I've gathered, the bluetooth API for Victron is closed so it cant be used for integration with emoncms/HA, it only works with the APP

olopan:
Looking at you, one kin as you just dey mention Pi3 .... That thing is 45k minimum now ...

Lol I got them in 2016 and 2018 o, before things went to the next level, I got one out of curiousity, the second came as an EmonCMS base station when I used it for energy monitoring. I've retired that and now run HAOS on that Pi, the second one is a media server.

NiyiOmoIyunade:
You might consider a Raspberry Pi and install the Victron Venus OS on it. That should give you all the functionality at a fraction of the cost.

With a Pi you also get ease of integration with your home automation.

Be ready to get hands on to get all to work seamlessly.

I'm not afraid to get my hands dirty, I already have home assistant running on a PI, the issue I have is how to get into the Multiplus. Had to run HAOS because it's a Pi3 I have and a supervised install kept freezing. I have another Pi I want to use as a media server so I would be loathe to convert it to an EMS just because of Victron.

Saipro:
And here's the DIY option. Cheapest and most fun. Hardest to implement but way more flexible. Be the lord of your own setup. You would still need Victron USB cables (the DIY cables are often unreliable).

can you share a link? my issue is the range of cables, it seems
1. For the CC I need a normal cable, (seen somewhere I can use a cable and ESP chip to hack serial to wifi)
2. For the BMV 712 I would need another cable as well,
3. For the multiplus it seems I need to choose between a different type of cable from 1 and 2 and another type of Bluetooth dongle,

mennnn victron will find it difficult to scale at this rate, they seem to enjoy making things complicated

isangjohnson:
[quote author=netotse

Oga, I'm at your back.
Update.. ...

tried to send you a message via NL, please check your email

olopan:
I understand you are trying to cut cost and all but have you tried saving up for the GX devices, a VENUS with no display will go a long way especially forbyour home automation, the options you mentioned earlier will only give a temporary solution

Thanks but the GX is an overkill for me and at 3X the cost of the MK3 (or VE Bus dongle) it's difficult for me to justify. If I hammer I could go for it but in these days of racing dollar prices I'm not in a hurry.

Hi Guys,

I'm trying to decide which one would be better for my Multiplus, a VE.bus bluetooth dongle or a MK3 USB cable
I'm thinking of integrating the multiplus into Home Assistant and I'm also penny pinching.

It seems configuration ability is limited with the bluetooth dongle but the disadvantage of the cable is that it has to be connected to change settings and also get data, not sure which would be a better option.

If there's anyone that has a spare MK3 cable I wouldn't mind.

Hi Guys,

Does anyone know where I can find a 48VDC contactor in lagos? I'm look for a cheap way to maximize/prioritize my solar use and want to use a relay-contactor combo.

I will set an under voltage relay to close when battery voltage is, at say, 50V and supply the coils of the contactor which will then close and supply AC to charge the batteries through the inverter, so as long as voltage is above 50V, relay(and therefore contactor) should be open and you are using the panels to power your house. This should mean that you don't need to be manually switching of AC power supply to maximise solar.

The relay is easy to find but the 48 VDC coil contactor is what I have been looking for, does anyone here know how I can find one?

I'm also open to suggestions on easier ways to achieve this.

BR

Hi Guys,

I have an old luminous 875W inverter that is fine but the casing is damaged, does anyone know where I can get a casing for the inverter in the attached picture?

mank1234:
New Sonoff devices supporting DIY mode
https://tasmota.github.io/docs/Sonoff-DIY/

For models that don't support DIY mode, you can watch YouTube videos on how to do it.: just type flash Sonoff tasmota and search. Little knowledge of soldering may be required.

Thanks a bunch, would probably need to go hunting for a soldering iron, I do t have the R3

mank1234:
Alternatively, if you have raspberry pi you can get ICC software from info@iccsoftware.co.za at a fee.

Afterwards, I can give you a seller on aliexpress that tasmotizes Esp-based devices or you can get some of the device (eg Sonoff) yourself and flash with tasmota. ICC software will use any of the inverter parameter you want to automate your device on and off.

Can you share a link to a resource for flashing the sonoff? I have a couple I would like to tinker with

Mcy56:
Sign the transferor side and possibly fill your CHN.
Morgan should complete the rest for you.

Thanks a bunch

netotse:
HI Guys, I need some help with Morgan, been calling customer care but I can't get through to anyone

I'm trying to fill the stock transfer form for Morgan, which are the important parts to fill? company name, my name, CHN number. Is there anything else?

Also, where do I sign? transferor, or transferee?

@Mcy56
can you help?

HI Guys, I need some help with Morgan, been calling customer care but I can't get through to anyone

I'm trying to fill the stock transfer form for Morgan, which are the important parts to fill? company name, my name, CHN number. Is there anything else?

Also, where do I sign? transferor, or transferee?