This is a super timely video for me. I had decided to not integrate a smart shunt into each battery, like I had originally planned. I was planning to use the one smart shunt for all six batteries, and this validates my plan. Thanks!
Yes, there is no point logging into each BMS and check for that. You want one centralised device. Maybe consider the battery monitor as it comes with the display and relay.
Just to add to the confusion: I have found, that in my system the JK BMS and the Lynx Shunt SOC values are actually identical. They weren't at first because I didn't top balance my cells, but after a few days of balancing with the JK they're now below 10mV difference and all charge to the 3.4V equally fast. So now the two SOC values perfectly match up :) I've got just one 280Ah battery with 10kWp solar, it goes down to around 50-60% overnight and is at 100% as soon as we get a few hours of sunlight :D
The question is though, will they stay synced over time when you are not going to fully charge your battery for a while and have only mini cycles every day?
@@OffGridGarageAustralia I'm curious too but at the moment I can't test that due to an abundance of energy. Though I'm getting a 6kW Heater for my 1,5m³ hot water buffer which will cycle the battery between 95 and 80%. I shall report back the moment anything interesting happens :)
Great video, your still rocking it! I have 6 Victron smart shunts, but no other Victron gear. I use them as a the default battery monitor for each of my Li battery banks and also as a check to my inverter load. It's great because I can use the VRM to keep track of my off grid system when i'm traveling.
This is the most informative video about the VictronConnect smart shunt that I have found. I have been battling with how to program my smart shunt for months and my system is a hot mess since we installed it. Stupid thing shuts off my power and solar arrays randomly and I can’t figure it out. About to toss it to the wind, but I have new hope to remedy it now. Thank you for the help!
Thanks for this contribution. It helped me a lot to understand and setup my Smart Shunt! That should basically come in a proper manual from the manufacturer, where only one sheet of paper comes along with the device.
I love your work - reminds of my younger days DIY'ing everything from slate/glass HiFi turntables to homemade Hibachi BBQ's. Nowadays I just buy a BBQ or a HIFi. Battery SOC on a DIY Solar PV Lithium battery system is a bit like range anxiety in an Electric Vehicle. We are progressing to a stage where battery Capacity and SOC are of academic interest. I am there right now. Knowing these figures in real time is an interesting nice to have right now. My Off-Grid (nearly) home runs for months without me looking at them. In the beginning, about 7 years ago, I watched them like a hawk, 24/7. IMHO, unless the Victron Smart Shunt is integrated into the system in some way that it actually controls something which results in a positive outcome, I would rather live with the figures presented to me by my Inverter and spend the cash on something nice.
Hi Andy! Another great video as always. I realize that the Victron is a very accurate device to have however also very pricy. After a big disappointment with the screen for the JK BMS I'm looking at options and thinking about the Renogy RBM 500. You always do the best most detailed reviews and hope you'll do a video on this in the future. Really enjoy your channel.
Yep Andy, that would be very helpful - if you can find the time. BTW very informative and enjoyable series. Thanks for all your hard work. Mark K. Dublin. Ireland.
I was considering getting one of those, but we only have about 2 months, maybe less, of summer left here in the uk, so thought I'd wait till next year. Over the winter I'll buy 2 more batteries ready for the sun to arrive in spring 🎉 Then I'll have 4 x 12V 100ah batteries making a 24V 200ah system ready for 2023 😁 At least I'll be able to save more on the impending electricity price increases here in the UK 🤬 More battery, less time on mains electricity 👍 Thank you Andy for the helpful guide 🍻🍻 Stay charged 😉
Don't discount how much solar you can make in the winter months! The panels are much more efficient in the cold! Plus you can tilt them an get a huge increase as well. If your solar charge controller allows for it go ahead and over panel it. Solar panels are fairly cheap in comparison to the rest of the system. It's worth overdoing!
Yes, it's a bit confusing with all those settings though. One thing I have discovered is that I would like to see a setting called constant watt instead of constant current because (now it's coming) when you charge with constant current the voltage on the battery increases and then you charge with more and more watts example ( 2.45x100A=245w 3.45x100A=345w). You do an excellent job and also entertaining and educational, I love your solar panels on the roof East and West and then in the middle of a forest of trees.
Excellent explained use a smart shunt on lithiums but don't throw away your old gauges you might lose your ah display but shows you still shows amps ,time in use and voltage (might have to use maths to find ah (amps X time)
Andy I always set the AUX to midpoint voltage on my lithium banks, it gives me a good reference point on balancing, when upload to Victron VRM you can see the history of the two halves of the bank are at even voltage
Andy didn't know how else to inform you. On your site, the "my-settings" page. I found 2 links in the Victron VE.Smart Network section, are broken. "tutorial and how-to video" the other is the "VE.Smart Networking documentation" Thanks man, just helped me get my SmartShunt all configured. I don't know what I do without it, my JK PB series BMS is just flat out wrong!
This is great! Been trying to understand my victron bmv for the longest time, it's the only way my battery can communicate SoC to my voltronic inverter using some pi software..
Andy, thank you so much for this contribution. It is the last configuration I need to verify in my system. You guve me the good feeling that my system is now configured correctly. Not to mention the gain in understanding the system. Thank you :-)
Damn - how did you know my Victron Smart Shunt arrives tomorrow? That video is just on time ;). Cheers. Got some nice cold german beer - temps rising up to 30°C tomorrow here in northern germany. Maybe i should send some Glühwein?
Hahaha, that is great timing indeed! I need to buy a jumper form my own merch collection for next winter. It's just too cold inside the garage. 30° is nice and our Wohlfuehltemperatur down here.
This is just such a great channel! I learn so many small details here, when preparing to build my own Victron system on my offgrid cabin i Sweden. And Andy just seems to be such a nice fellow you want to talk a beer with and laugh at stupid stuff. :D
Thanks Andy for another great tutorial. I've been using SLA battery's for the past year and there doing OK. But I should be receiving me lifepo4 cells tomorrow hopefully and I'm getting a little excited😂. Thanks for all your help mate .
Hi Andy. I'm from South africa and have 2 Freedom Won eTower 100Ah batteries which uses the Pace BMS. I recently returned one of the batteries because it had an issue with bad cells and Freedom Won replaced it with a new one. The issue I have now is thaat the old battery *bought Dec 2021" and the new battery have different firmware version. The old one at V1.10 and the new one at v5.07. This has been checked and updated to the latest firmware by Freedom Won. It does seem that there is some compatibility issues. When reaching the lower side of SOC% levels the SOC% of the 2 batteries differ up to 27%. The Victron equipment then seems to use the middlepoint. What this caused now is that when ESS starts to use grid power at set 20% SOC the new battery sits as low as 7% while the old battery sits at 34%. Freedom Won swears that the two firmware versions are 100% compatible. What do you think? I suspect it;s the Firmware causing the problems. Next I want to do capacity tests on each individual battery but after no sunshine for days, I'm waiting for some sun to fully charge the batteries before I can continue with the tests. I try to only charge them from the grid in emergencies. I would really love to hear your thoughts on this.
I have my houseboat set to 30% (48V 1120AH (16S4P - 280AH)), so if my guest need more battery I can set it via VRM to 20 or 10%...very important feature!
Hi Andy, I have been waiting for this video for some time. I am having issues with the smart shunt resetting to 100% when fully charged. In my application the bank is charged to 100% on a daily basis if all goes well, but the smart shunt will stop at 97% and not reset at least half the time. On consecutive days ill lose another 3% even though the voltage reaches 14.2v. Right now i just reset the shunt to 100% if there is a problem. The settings at the moment are Charge Voltage - 13.9, Tail Current - 2%, Charge detection time - 1m
I have a Victron Smart Shunt and a single 16 cells bank (304 Ah per cell) with a Daly BMS (yes I know... and I blew it last week because I removed the wire on the last cell during wiring maintenance without disconnecting the 17 wire connector - $200 wasted - I will remember this one). The Daly reports always lower than the victron and at some point it was stuck in the 50-60% range while the victron was at 95% which made sense after a few days of full sun and many KWh of charge reported by my Growatt (via SolarAssitant). Which, by the way Andy, you should test as this is a nice app to monitor an all in one inverter like Growatt and it can also monitor my Daly BMS and supports many other even the JK one. Nice charts too. It runs off a Raspi 3 or 4.
Thanks for sharing, Michael. A shame the DALY got destroyed when disconnecting the last wire. This is the power supply for the Daly (most positive) and should just turn it off. Yeah, I have a Raspi here already and need to pay around with the comms side of things. There is just not enough time 🤷♂️
@@OffGridGarageAustralia Well this is my guess that I cause the Daly to fail. But it could also be the Raspi of SolarAssitant that connects to the Daly serial port that damaged it because the power supply section of the Raspi burned and smelled at about the same time and when I touched the serial connector the Daly shutdown. Daly is working but reports many errors related to its memory - it's useless and will not even read cell voltages. So maybe it's not me that killed it after all! I will get a Raspi replacement from SolarAssistant (bought it along the with software as a kit) so this is good. Anyways, setting up Solar Assistant is a breeze and it comes as an image you put on a memory card and then you configure it via a web interface. One more thing to consider one day... Thanks for your work by the way - it's helping me and others and you are fun to watch.
I use The Outback power Flexnet DC with three shunt's it is pretty accurate and you can set the battery efficiency which helps when factoring in efficiency loses from the BMS's
Hi Andy greetings from Adelaide the reason for incorrect readings from balancer shunts you have I believe if you look at the circuit of the shunts its forming a serious and parallel circuits so with simple OHMS LAW if you know the values of the shunts you can work out the fault factor or percentage difference correct me if I'm wrong. Love your videos keep them coming have a great day.
I have a 50kWh battery bank made up of 6 individual batteries and the 4 that have a way to display SOC never match up. I use my SmartShunt to calculate actual percentage, and I have changed my peukert exponent to 1.01 and it seems to be a very good average between the banks.
An extra feature, and worthy, is that the shunt measures a far more accurate battery voltage, and the value can be shared over Bluetooth to feed the MPPT chargers with the more accurate figure. You do need to create the Bluetooth network in the settings, well at least the BMV-712 allows this... The chargers, especially if pumping amps, will be affected by the resistance of the cables, reading higher than true terminal voltage.
I have learned everything from your videos although I was reluctant to watch at first. My question is should my bms or how do my bms relate to my charge settings. So say I follow your overkill settings . Can u do a quick video of if u set bms to say 3.50 full voltage what r charge settings. I'm confused how the two work together. I know this is basic child's play for you but we all have to start somewhere. Ty
Great video. Thank you. I am also interested in the solar energy and electronics , and I made a channel to teach the Arab community to use a few solar energy devices. I wish I could use the surplus of your equipment to educate people and spread knowledge 😥
Im going to remote area of the country (Philippines) this summer to install offgrid solar. They dont have electricity there. Kids are studying at night using candle lamps. Electricity cost is beyond the reach of community there.
Great vid, some of my settings were slightly different but seem to be working ok as i've been keeping an eye on the fully charged and nearly fully discharged voltages. I've changed them 25% towards yours - i'll keep an eye on what happens!
Hi Andy, Thanks for an excellent tutorial ref. the smart shunt. Sadly I can only afford a basic 100AH deep cycle gel battery which seems to work ok for now. If you have time please could you advise me on the settings for my 12v simple off grid system so that I can try and get my new Victron shunt operational and accurate. Thanks
I have the bmv712 and my biggest problem with it is the relay setting by state of charge, affects discharge floor and therefore also affects the time to go counter. For example i have the soc relay setting to turn on my hot water service above 80% soc, and turn off below 60%soc, therefore my time to go counter now doesn't work if my battery is below 60%. I have the hot water set like this because i know that i use roughly 40% of my battery capacity overnight during winter with electric blankets and such, and wanted some headroom for emergencies, so given that hot water is more a luxury than a necessity, having it cut off at 60% was a good idea. But as i said, this now means i have no time to go counter below 60%, and the time to go above 60% is only counting that top 40% of the capacity. Victron needs to separate the soc relay setting and discharge floor setting. Also, if i go and set up the soc relay to my desired percentage, and then go and adjust the discharge floor, it also automatically adjusts the soc relay to the same setting. Why bother having two settings in the menu if they both do the same thing?!?!?
Love the shunt! I just hate the fact it wont show Solar on the same screen with victron connect bluetooth app. ie - i have 900 watts solar coming in, and 200 watts load from items. it will show +700 watts into battery - infinite run time. I have to goto the MMPT solar screen and get the reading then do the math.
Good morning Andy from America 🇺🇸. I bought the ZKE Tech 40 Amp cell tester, based on your reviews but I am having trouble with connecting it to my laptop, I don't know if it is the serial board inside the tester or the USB dongle. Do you have any suggestions
If I use the smart Seplos BMS, the Multiplus / cerbo requests more power than needed from the grid. This is because of the power loss during transmision from battery to Multiplus. (At least my guess). It works better when I use the smartshunt or the multiplus.
Surely the JK BMS has a shunt. It reads current and coulomb counts for remaining capacity. Though I found I had to enter a reduced value for capacity as my charge controller end limits reduce my accessible capacity. With this tweak this BMS shunt functioned perfectly. It sets 100% SOC automatically as the highest incoming coulomb count it ever receives, then calculates the rest from your entered Ah capacity figure and its measured current.
As you have seen the JK showed 39%SOC, so was way off the true SOC. Well, what I call true SOC. The shunts in the BMS have just not the capabilities of such a fine tuning to be more precise, I found.
@@OffGridGarageAustralia It did take a while to get useful truthful figures on my JKBMS. Once JKBMS had top balanced I could safely set my charge controller to max out at 56volts and the JK automatically defines this as 100% SOC after first charge cycle.😊 Then as my inverter cuts out at 44 volts I had to enter my 280Ah cells as only 255Ah on the JKBMS to get a useful 0% SOC value. 😁From then it was plain sailing. ( Or at least plain enough to stop me emptying my whole system just to top up my electric car! and this leaves me a small hidden reserve to run the freezer overnight) 👌 Thanks for the thought and experiment inspiring channel.
@Off-Grid Garage - If you build your own battery the users are right, they have already a shunt. BUT...if you have ready build batteries without any BMS system (Lead acid, AMG, LiFePo4 ...) the Victron Smart Shunt is a very helpfull tool and works very good. A Smart Shunt is used for all batteries in your system in that way. 16:50 - For this you have also the Smart Battery Protect ;-)
The BMS (and Balancer) also consumes Ah on pack side, not measured by the shunt. Would be interesting the self consumption of the BMS. My JBD has probaly a very high consumption due to the huge Relaise instead of MOSFETs.
Andy I'm having trouble with my Victron smart shunt I have two separate 120ah battery Banks on the Shunt but once I get down to 50% or burn the first 120ah it doesn't tell me how much remaining time I have no more and every time I get close to burning the first 120ah it tells me I have very little time left as if I only have one 120ah battery connected to it
Hi Andy. I live in Brisbane and am upgrading to an EV - a BYD Atto 3. I was wondering whether you have or would be interested in doing one of your videos as it relates to EV charging. Apparently the BYD Atto 3 will only charge at 7kW through the onboard AC charger, but can charge at 80 kW at a DC charger. Like you I have the room to put more solar panels and am thinking of putting a ground mounted array to charge a battery system. Things I would like to know are around DC voltage drop, cable size and length for a given distance to the EV. With the tsunami of interest in EV's by Australians now I think quite a few people would be interested in your point of view regarding what onboard chargers are in EV's, and options for DIY AC and DC charging. Love your channel Andy. I thought this might be another topic to include in your channel. If you have done something already could you point me to it thanks. Cheers
You have 3 batteries and the shunt reads it as one large battery. My camper has 2 lithium batteries, had a victron shunt installed by camper dealer. The app shows oneaim battery but then a starter battery for the second. Shouldn't i be able to hook it up to have both batteries read as one?
If you install the victron smart shunt between bms and cells, what happens in the event of a bms shut down when your victron mppt is reading voltage from the smart shunt? The mppt will no longer be connected to the battery but it will still be reading battery voltage. I have heard that you will get a high voltage on the bus that might damage other kit like a victron orion for example
You don't do that! Battery - BMS - Shunt. The battery and the BMS belong together as a unit. Disconnecting the MPPT from the battery is not a problem. The Victron MPPTs will go into Absorption mode and still deliver power at this voltage to the load (if there is enough sun), even without any battery connected.
I have 2 banks of 6 eg4 batteries (not LL). Needing a wiring diagram to connect my 500A smart shunt to them. Banks are parallel to parallel. Pairing off on th😊e two negatives. Thanks. I have two eg4 6500es inverters.
I love my SmartShunt. The VictronConnect app on Android is a bit basic but it works. The VictronConnect software on Windows 10 is disappointing. It would be nice if they upgraded to allow long-term data storage. Disconnect and the data refreshes, losing the previous data every time. I was hoping for much better.
I love the smart shunt (12vx2=24 volt set up), but my problem is that I have a balancer that top balances the batteries automatically but it throws off the Victron. It still connects and tells me state of charge and the other important info.
Are you still running your smart shunt between your batteries and your BMS?? If I do such a thing, do I need to be concerned with the power draw of the smart shunt? Can I take the auxiliary input of the smart shunt and connect it to the output of the BMS??
HI! Thank you for your fantastic videos! I built 4 parallelled 16s Lifepo4 batteries and right now I am thinking about adding Victron Smart Shunt to my system. The only thing I really dont understand is - where do I install it? (Position). Each one of my batteries is connected to two massiv busbars which distribute to two MPPT 450/100 and two MP5000. Where and how would you install a smartshunt in my case? Thank You :)
The shunt needs to go between the bus bars and the batteries. Maybe consider installing a second pair of bus bars to connect the MPPTs and load to. The shunt goes in between the two sets of busbars then.
Hi Andy, I'm not sure as for now it will be a future project for me but you possibly could use the smart shunt to control a relay triggered by SOC by using MQTT messages via VRM and a smart relay like a Shelly
Thanks Andy- great and topical as always. My smart shunt (actually BMV-712) is a lifesaver in my caravan. Without it, I would often have almost no idea how much capacity I had left. However many people DO still get caught after a lengthy period of time without doing a sync at top of charge. Over time it’s reading can become very unreliable without a sync. I’m guessing your’s would be a fair way out of whack if it hasn’t synced in forty something days. By the way… do you know when and how the JK BMS recalculates top of charge for it’s SOC reading?
How can your batteries be charged to 100% if one has a higher Ah rating than the other two? (304, 280, 280). I was under the impression that you have to always connect batteries in series or parallel that have the same Ah rating, because the smallest one will limit the capacity of the largest one. How do you keep the two smaller batteries from over charging?
Hi Andy, I did reply to your last message regarding smart controller settings but seems you have not seen it yet. Can you in meantime give me a clue about the smart shunt settings on 2x 100ah lithium at 12v I can't make head nor tail what I'm doing. Greetings from a slightly warmer UK today.
Hello, does anybody know what the shunt shows when connected with a high frequency hybrid inverter like Growatt or Pwrmon China and multi batteries in parallel? I have such configuration abd the shunt is inaccurate in SOC, in total Ah going in the battery., and total discharged. I charge around 1000amps hours and it shows 40 as if measuring only the growatt charge cycle and not other moots I have also in parallel..
Hi Andy. I’m not 100% sure on this but I was under the impression you did not need to run the Bluetooth network if you are running all of your devices into the CERBOGX as you run the DVCC?
I've just arranged an Amazon returns on the Smart Shunt after reading a comment on Will Prowse's review. One comment there said that if you log out of bluetooth, when you go back in, it resets the SOC to 100%? Is this correct?
Hi Andy. Whenever my Victron Scc reaches FLOAT mode I SYNCHRONIZE the Smart Shunt to 100%. And CALIBRATE current to ZERO since no current flows at this mode. Is that ok? I followed your settings to Absorption=3.45v and Float=3.35v. Timely video btw. The entire ecosystem of offgrid has so many moving parts. Its just impossible to know them all. You are a great help to us.
That is OK, Noel. Just you will hit the Float voltage far earlier than Absorption. How do you do that? The shunt may reset whenever you hit 3.35V which could be 70-80%SOC only.
How to trigger a relay using smart shunt SOC % , as smart shunt 500 doesn't have built in relay, can i trigger 150/45 mppt relay or 100/20 mppt dc output On or OFF ?? For example at 90 % SOC i want trigger some load and at 80 % off. I also use Ras Pi 4 for VRM any possible way , please help. Thank You.
Just a quick thank you for sharing your knowledge regarding off-grid. It's been extremely useful. Thanks!!
In memory of Peter Lustig, many thanks for this Andy. It has amused me vary much and well remembered.
Yes, the end was from Peter...
This is a super timely video for me. I had decided to not integrate a smart shunt into each battery, like I had originally planned. I was planning to use the one smart shunt for all six batteries, and this validates my plan. Thanks!
Yes, there is no point logging into each BMS and check for that. You want one centralised device. Maybe consider the battery monitor as it comes with the display and relay.
@@OffGridGarageAustralia Huh, I thought they didn't support 48v, but I just looked again and they do. That's ... interesting.
Your explanations are so much better compared to the product videos of Victron. Amazing! Thanks for sharing. 🙏
Thank you, Lino!
Bought this device after this video, and have never looked back... :)
Just to add to the confusion: I have found, that in my system the JK BMS and the Lynx Shunt SOC values are actually identical. They weren't at first because I didn't top balance my cells, but after a few days of balancing with the JK they're now below 10mV difference and all charge to the 3.4V equally fast. So now the two SOC values perfectly match up :)
I've got just one 280Ah battery with 10kWp solar, it goes down to around 50-60% overnight and is at 100% as soon as we get a few hours of sunlight :D
The question is though, will they stay synced over time when you are not going to fully charge your battery for a while and have only mini cycles every day?
@@OffGridGarageAustralia I'm curious too but at the moment I can't test that due to an abundance of energy. Though I'm getting a 6kW Heater for my 1,5m³ hot water buffer which will cycle the battery between 95 and 80%. I shall report back the moment anything interesting happens :)
Great video, your still rocking it! I have 6 Victron smart shunts, but no other Victron gear. I use them as a the default battery monitor for each of my Li battery banks and also as a check to my inverter load. It's great because I can use the VRM to keep track of my off grid system when i'm traveling.
This is the most informative video about the VictronConnect smart shunt that I have found. I have been battling with how to program my smart shunt for months and my system is a hot mess since we installed it. Stupid thing shuts off my power and solar arrays randomly and I can’t figure it out. About to toss it to the wind, but I have new hope to remedy it now. Thank you for the help!
Thank you. You explained better than all the Victron technicians in the media.
Oh, thank you very much!
The end sounds like that you are a brother of Peter Lustig. Thanks for this video, lots of helpful contend.
That's exactly where it came from. You must be as old as I am 😂
Thanks for this contribution. It helped me a lot to understand and setup my Smart Shunt!
That should basically come in a proper manual from the manufacturer,
where only one sheet of paper comes along with the device.
I love your work - reminds of my younger days DIY'ing everything from slate/glass HiFi turntables to homemade Hibachi BBQ's.
Nowadays I just buy a BBQ or a HIFi.
Battery SOC on a DIY Solar PV Lithium battery system is a bit like range anxiety in an Electric Vehicle. We are progressing to a stage where battery Capacity and SOC are of academic interest. I am there right now.
Knowing these figures in real time is an interesting nice to have right now. My Off-Grid (nearly) home runs for months without me looking at them. In the beginning, about 7 years ago, I watched them like a hawk, 24/7.
IMHO, unless the Victron Smart Shunt is integrated into the system in some way that it actually controls something which results in a positive outcome, I would rather live with the figures presented to me by my Inverter and spend the cash on something nice.
Hi Andy! Another great video as always. I realize that the Victron is a very accurate device to have however also very pricy. After a big disappointment with the screen for the JK BMS I'm looking at options and thinking about the Renogy RBM 500. You always do the best most detailed reviews and hope you'll do a video on this in the future. Really enjoy your channel.
I would love to see you integrate your systems into Home Assistant. This would be an awesome next series.
Yep Andy, that would be very helpful - if you can find the time.
BTW very informative and enjoyable series. Thanks for all your hard work.
Mark K. Dublin. Ireland.
I was considering getting one of those, but we only have about 2 months, maybe less, of summer left here in the uk, so thought I'd wait till next year.
Over the winter I'll buy 2 more batteries ready for the sun to arrive in spring 🎉
Then I'll have 4 x 12V 100ah batteries making a 24V 200ah system ready for 2023 😁
At least I'll be able to save more on the impending electricity price increases here in the UK 🤬 More battery, less time on mains electricity 👍
Thank you Andy for the helpful guide 🍻🍻
Stay charged 😉
Thank you. Step by step you're getting there...
Don't discount how much solar you can make in the winter months! The panels are much more efficient in the cold! Plus you can tilt them an get a huge increase as well. If your solar charge controller allows for it go ahead and over panel it. Solar panels are fairly cheap in comparison to the rest of the system. It's worth overdoing!
Thanks. This filled in A few remaing questions I needed to work through. Very much appreciated.
Yes, it's a bit confusing with all those settings though. One thing I have discovered is that I would like to see a setting called constant watt instead of constant current because (now it's coming) when you charge with constant current the voltage on the battery increases and then you charge with more and more watts example ( 2.45x100A=245w 3.45x100A=345w). You do an excellent job and also entertaining and educational, I love your solar panels on the roof East and West and then in the middle of a forest of trees.
Excellent explained use a smart shunt on lithiums but don't throw away your old gauges you might lose your ah display but shows you still shows amps ,time in use and voltage (might have to use maths to find ah (amps X time)
Andy I always set the AUX to midpoint voltage on my lithium banks, it gives me a good reference point on balancing, when upload to Victron VRM you can see the history of the two halves of the bank are at even voltage
Belle démonstration ANDY, je suis tout à fait d'accord avec ton point de vue, bonne continuation.
Great and Thanks Andy! You helped me so mutch in that two Years where i began to build our Island PV and i just installed the Smart Shunt. 🙂
Andy didn't know how else to inform you. On your site, the "my-settings" page. I found 2 links in the Victron VE.Smart Network section, are broken. "tutorial and how-to video" the other is the "VE.Smart Networking documentation" Thanks man, just helped me get my SmartShunt all configured. I don't know what I do without it, my JK PB series BMS is just flat out wrong!
Thanks for the info! I have updated the broken links now.
Thanks for this info, I was having trouble understanding some of these settings and what they did.
This is great! Been trying to understand my victron bmv for the longest time, it's the only way my battery can communicate SoC to my voltronic inverter using some pi software..
Yes, the BMV software is similar but has additional features for the relay.
Congrats and thanks for sharing. Your video helped me a lot!!!
Andy, thank you so much for this contribution. It is the last configuration I need to verify in my system. You guve me the good feeling that my system is now configured correctly. Not to mention the gain in understanding the system. Thank you :-)
Damn - how did you know my Victron Smart Shunt arrives tomorrow? That video is just on time ;).
Cheers. Got some nice cold german beer - temps rising up to 30°C tomorrow here in northern germany. Maybe i should send some Glühwein?
Hahaha, that is great timing indeed! I need to buy a jumper form my own merch collection for next winter. It's just too cold inside the garage. 30° is nice and our Wohlfuehltemperatur down here.
Thanks! I needed this information 😌
Thanks mate, I have one not hook up. Had to go pickup one 250 W panel yesterday morning asI was one short. I need to get 5 more rails for the roof.
This is just such a great channel! I learn so many small details here, when preparing to build my own Victron system on my offgrid cabin i Sweden. And Andy just seems to be such a nice fellow you want to talk a beer with and laugh at stupid stuff. :D
Thanks Andy for another great tutorial. I've been using SLA battery's for the past year and there doing OK. But I should be receiving me lifepo4 cells tomorrow hopefully and I'm getting a little excited😂. Thanks for all your help mate .
Thanks Andy
Hahah the Helltec was right.... Just goes to show, even a broken clock is right twice a day... 😁
Yeah, that is true 😂
😂😂
Hi Andy. I'm from South africa and have 2 Freedom Won eTower 100Ah batteries which uses the Pace BMS. I recently returned one of the batteries because it had an issue with bad cells and Freedom Won replaced it with a new one. The issue I have now is thaat the old battery *bought Dec 2021" and the new battery have different firmware version. The old one at V1.10 and the new one at v5.07. This has been checked and updated to the latest firmware by Freedom Won. It does seem that there is some compatibility issues. When reaching the lower side of SOC% levels the SOC% of the 2 batteries differ up to 27%. The Victron equipment then seems to use the middlepoint. What this caused now is that when ESS starts to use grid power at set 20% SOC the new battery sits as low as 7% while the old battery sits at 34%.
Freedom Won swears that the two firmware versions are 100% compatible. What do you think? I suspect it;s the Firmware causing the problems. Next I want to do capacity tests on each individual battery but after no sunshine for days, I'm waiting for some sun to fully charge the batteries before I can continue with the tests. I try to only charge them from the grid in emergencies.
I would really love to hear your thoughts on this.
Thanks for the video! Would be great to see an update on this with your new settings :).
I have my houseboat set to 30% (48V 1120AH (16S4P - 280AH)), so if my guest need more battery I can set it via VRM to 20 or 10%...very important feature!
Yes, that's what I thought it is especially useful on a boat to keep a buffer. For the guests 😊
Hi Andy, I have been waiting for this video for some time. I am having issues with the smart shunt resetting to 100% when fully charged. In my application the bank is charged to 100% on a daily basis if all goes well, but the smart shunt will stop at 97% and not reset at least half the time. On consecutive days ill lose another 3% even though the voltage reaches 14.2v. Right now i just reset the shunt to 100% if there is a problem. The settings at the moment are Charge Voltage - 13.9, Tail Current - 2%, Charge detection time - 1m
If the shunt does not reset, one of the three parameters is not met. What is your overall battery capacity?
@@OffGridGarageAustralia 400Ah
I have a Victron Smart Shunt and a single 16 cells bank (304 Ah per cell) with a Daly BMS (yes I know... and I blew it last week because I removed the wire on the last cell during wiring maintenance without disconnecting the 17 wire connector - $200 wasted - I will remember this one). The Daly reports always lower than the victron and at some point it was stuck in the 50-60% range while the victron was at 95% which made sense after a few days of full sun and many KWh of charge reported by my Growatt (via SolarAssitant). Which, by the way Andy, you should test as this is a nice app to monitor an all in one inverter like Growatt and it can also monitor my Daly BMS and supports many other even the JK one. Nice charts too. It runs off a Raspi 3 or 4.
Thanks for sharing, Michael. A shame the DALY got destroyed when disconnecting the last wire. This is the power supply for the Daly (most positive) and should just turn it off.
Yeah, I have a Raspi here already and need to pay around with the comms side of things. There is just not enough time 🤷♂️
@@OffGridGarageAustralia Well this is my guess that I cause the Daly to fail. But it could also be the Raspi of SolarAssitant that connects to the Daly serial port that damaged it because the power supply section of the Raspi burned and smelled at about the same time and when I touched the serial connector the Daly shutdown. Daly is working but reports many errors related to its memory - it's useless and will not even read cell voltages. So maybe it's not me that killed it after all! I will get a Raspi replacement from SolarAssistant (bought it along the with software as a kit) so this is good. Anyways, setting up Solar Assistant is a breeze and it comes as an image you put on a memory card and then you configure it via a web interface. One more thing to consider one day... Thanks for your work by the way - it's helping me and others and you are fun to watch.
Great overview of the shunt settings.
I use The Outback power Flexnet DC with three shunt's it is pretty accurate and you can set the battery efficiency which helps when factoring in efficiency loses from the BMS's
That was great mate, 👌 always easy to understand...
Hi Andy greetings from Adelaide the reason for incorrect readings from balancer shunts you have I believe if you look at the circuit of the shunts its forming a serious and parallel circuits so with simple OHMS LAW if you know the values of the shunts you can work out the fault factor or percentage difference correct me if I'm wrong. Love your videos keep them coming have a great day.
Hello, thank you very much for your explanation! They gave me a lot of help setting up my first victron system! Greetings to down under from germany!
Best explanation on RUclips! Thank you.
Glad it was helpful!
I have a 50kWh battery bank made up of 6 individual batteries and the 4 that have a way to display SOC never match up. I use my SmartShunt to calculate actual percentage, and I have changed my peukert exponent to 1.01 and it seems to be a very good average between the banks.
With so many banks, you have to have a smart shunt at some point.
Thanks for sharing.
Once again Andy another very informative video thank you. Many people will be grateful.
Thanks for all your equipment testing and informative videos.
An extra feature, and worthy, is that the shunt measures a far more accurate battery voltage, and the value can be shared over Bluetooth to feed the MPPT chargers with the more accurate figure. You do need to create the Bluetooth network in the settings, well at least the BMV-712 allows this...
The chargers, especially if pumping amps, will be affected by the resistance of the cables, reading higher than true terminal voltage.
This is a underrated feature. Syncs everything...not that I use victron lol.
Well, that's what I showed in the video 😁
I have learned everything from your videos although I was reluctant to watch at first. My question is should my bms or how do my bms relate to my charge settings. So say I follow your overkill settings . Can u do a quick video of if u set bms to say 3.50 full voltage what r charge settings. I'm confused how the two work together. I know this is basic child's play for you but we all have to start somewhere. Ty
Great video. Thank you. I am also interested in the solar energy and electronics , and I made a channel to teach the Arab community to use a few solar energy devices.
I wish I could use the surplus of your equipment to educate people and spread knowledge 😥
Great, thanks for doing this. Education and technical training is very important.
Im going to remote area of the country (Philippines) this summer to install offgrid solar. They dont have electricity there. Kids are studying at night using candle lamps. Electricity cost is beyond the reach of community there.
Great vid, some of my settings were slightly different but seem to be working ok as i've been keeping an eye on the fully charged and nearly fully discharged voltages. I've changed them 25% towards yours - i'll keep an eye on what happens!
Yeah, sharing my settings here should give you an idea what they do but you have to adapt to your own system and setup.
Hi Andy, Thanks for an excellent tutorial ref. the smart shunt. Sadly I can only afford a basic 100AH deep cycle gel battery which seems to work ok for now. If you have time please could you advise me on the settings for my 12v simple off grid system so that I can try and get my new Victron shunt operational and accurate. Thanks
I have the bmv712 and my biggest problem with it is the relay setting by state of charge, affects discharge floor and therefore also affects the time to go counter. For example i have the soc relay setting to turn on my hot water service above 80% soc, and turn off below 60%soc, therefore my time to go counter now doesn't work if my battery is below 60%.
I have the hot water set like this because i know that i use roughly 40% of my battery capacity overnight during winter with electric blankets and such, and wanted some headroom for emergencies, so given that hot water is more a luxury than a necessity, having it cut off at 60% was a good idea. But as i said, this now means i have no time to go counter below 60%, and the time to go above 60% is only counting that top 40% of the capacity. Victron needs to separate the soc relay setting and discharge floor setting.
Also, if i go and set up the soc relay to my desired percentage, and then go and adjust the discharge floor, it also automatically adjusts the soc relay to the same setting. Why bother having two settings in the menu if they both do the same thing?!?!?
Love the shunt!
I just hate the fact it wont show Solar on the same screen with victron connect bluetooth app.
ie - i have 900 watts solar coming in, and 200 watts load from items. it will show +700 watts into battery - infinite run time.
I have to goto the MMPT solar screen and get the reading then do the math.
I have a Victron Smart Shunt..... and a Victron Smart Sense, and ( 4 ) Victron MPPT Solar Charge Controllers.. I've been bitten by the Victron Bug !
Great devices. They all work together 😊
Bmv 712 is what I went with,
Yes, I wanted to safe some money and didn't really need the display. But the relay is definitely handy...
Much Thx, very-very important info for me in this video!
It's taken me awhile to figure out that you are not saying a pair of meters but rather parameters. It was a bit confusing. ;- ),
Andy you are amazing when l have a question l check your vídeos
Good morning Andy from America 🇺🇸. I bought the ZKE Tech 40 Amp cell tester, based on your reviews but I am having trouble with connecting it to my laptop, I don't know if it is the serial board inside the tester or the USB dongle. Do you have any suggestions
Thank you Andy for this. Great information.
If I use the smart Seplos BMS, the Multiplus / cerbo requests more power than needed from the grid. This is because of the power loss during transmision from battery to Multiplus. (At least my guess). It works better when I use the smartshunt or the multiplus.
Surely the JK BMS has a shunt. It reads current and coulomb counts for remaining capacity. Though I found I had to enter a reduced value for capacity as my charge controller end limits reduce my accessible capacity. With this tweak this BMS shunt functioned perfectly.
It sets 100% SOC automatically as the highest incoming coulomb count it ever receives, then calculates the rest from your entered Ah capacity figure and its measured current.
As you have seen the JK showed 39%SOC, so was way off the true SOC. Well, what I call true SOC. The shunts in the BMS have just not the capabilities of such a fine tuning to be more precise, I found.
@@OffGridGarageAustralia It did take a while to get useful truthful figures on my JKBMS. Once JKBMS had top balanced I could safely set my charge controller to max out at 56volts and the JK automatically defines this as 100% SOC after first charge cycle.😊 Then as my inverter cuts out at 44 volts I had to enter my 280Ah cells as only 255Ah on the JKBMS to get a useful 0% SOC value. 😁From then it was plain sailing. ( Or at least plain enough to stop me emptying my whole system just to top up my electric car! and this leaves me a small hidden reserve to run the freezer overnight) 👌 Thanks for the thought and experiment inspiring channel.
Brilliant information, thank you!
Thanks, Martin.
Absolutely beautiful installation. Nice Job
One smart shunt to rule them all
Hi,Andy sir,you always gives and upgrading our concepts,thanks..can you suggest that coulmb count device is helpful with smart shunt application..
Thanks Andy! Very informative, as always. Cheers!
Rick Fort Worth Texas.
@Off-Grid Garage - If you build your own battery the users are right, they have already a shunt. BUT...if you have ready build batteries without any BMS system (Lead acid, AMG, LiFePo4 ...) the Victron Smart Shunt is a very helpfull tool and works very good. A Smart Shunt is used for all batteries in your system in that way.
16:50 - For this you have also the Smart Battery Protect ;-)
6:06 just WoW!😍👌
Great Stuff, just wish they'd add a watt hour accumulator in addition to keeping AH.
Some inverters accumulate power output
They do if you change the mode to Energy Meter in the Shunt. It then shows the Wh.
@@OffGridGarageAustralia wow! Thank you Andy.
Bms s can be interchanged to see if they read the same.
The BMS (and Balancer) also consumes Ah on pack side, not measured by the shunt.
Would be interesting the self consumption of the BMS.
My JBD has probaly a very high consumption due to the huge Relaise instead of MOSFETs.
Thank you!
Victron need to give you some sponsorship
I cant find were to adjust the logging Protokoll from 15min to e.g. 1 min
Why don't you use a coulomb counter driven by a dc Hall effect toroid so there is no volt drop?
Andy I'm having trouble with my Victron smart shunt I have two separate 120ah battery Banks on the Shunt but once I get down to 50% or burn the first 120ah it doesn't tell me how much remaining time I have no more and every time I get close to burning the first 120ah it tells me I have very little time left as if I only have one 120ah battery connected to it
Hi Andy. I live in Brisbane and am upgrading to an EV - a BYD Atto 3. I was wondering whether you have or would be interested in doing one of your videos as it relates to EV charging. Apparently the BYD Atto 3 will only charge at 7kW through the onboard AC charger, but can charge at 80 kW at a DC charger. Like you I have the room to put more solar panels and am thinking of putting a ground mounted array to charge a battery system. Things I would like to know are around DC voltage drop, cable size and length for a given distance to the EV. With the tsunami of interest in EV's by Australians now I think quite a few people would be interested in your point of view regarding what onboard chargers are in EV's, and options for DIY AC and DC charging. Love your channel Andy. I thought this might be another topic to include in your channel. If you have done something already could you point me to it thanks. Cheers
You have 3 batteries and the shunt reads it as one large battery.
My camper has 2 lithium batteries, had a victron shunt installed by camper dealer.
The app shows oneaim battery but then a starter battery for the second. Shouldn't i be able to hook it up to have both batteries read as one?
Great share many thanks
Excellent video!
Thank you very much!
If you install the victron smart shunt between bms and cells, what happens in the event of a bms shut down when your victron mppt is reading voltage from the smart shunt? The mppt will no longer be connected to the battery but it will still be reading battery voltage. I have heard that you will get a high voltage on the bus that might damage other kit like a victron orion for example
You don't do that! Battery - BMS - Shunt. The battery and the BMS belong together as a unit.
Disconnecting the MPPT from the battery is not a problem. The Victron MPPTs will go into Absorption mode and still deliver power at this voltage to the load (if there is enough sun), even without any battery connected.
I have 2 banks of 6 eg4 batteries (not LL). Needing a wiring diagram to connect my 500A smart shunt to them. Banks are parallel to parallel. Pairing off on th😊e two negatives. Thanks. I have two eg4 6500es inverters.
I love my SmartShunt. The VictronConnect app on Android is a bit basic but it works. The VictronConnect software on Windows 10 is disappointing. It would be nice if they upgraded to allow long-term data storage. Disconnect and the data refreshes, losing the previous data every time. I was hoping for much better.
Mine keeps all the settings and history, just not the SOC.
I love the smart shunt (12vx2=24 volt set up), but my problem is that I have a balancer that top balances the batteries automatically but it throws off the Victron. It still connects and tells me state of charge and the other important info.
Are you still running your smart shunt between your batteries and your BMS?? If I do such a thing, do I need to be concerned with the power draw of the smart shunt? Can I take the auxiliary input of the smart shunt and connect it to the output of the BMS??
HI! Thank you for your fantastic videos!
I built 4 parallelled 16s Lifepo4 batteries and right now I am thinking about adding Victron Smart Shunt to my system.
The only thing I really dont understand is - where do I install it? (Position).
Each one of my batteries is connected to two massiv busbars which distribute to two MPPT 450/100 and two MP5000.
Where and how would you install a smartshunt in my case?
Thank You :)
The shunt needs to go between the bus bars and the batteries. Maybe consider installing a second pair of bus bars to connect the MPPTs and load to. The shunt goes in between the two sets of busbars then.
@@OffGridGarageAustralia Thank You! That sound like a very good idea :)
Hi Andy, I'm not sure as for now it will be a future project for me but you possibly could use the smart shunt to control a relay triggered by SOC by using MQTT messages via VRM and a smart relay like a Shelly
Yes, that is possible. Just another project I haven't got time for. I would love to explore that but just when...
@@OffGridGarageAustralia I know you are busy, thank you for taking the time to reply.
@@rattusfinkus Thanks for all your support, Collin. Appreciate all your comments. MQTT is certainly on my list 😁
Thanks Andy- great and topical as always. My smart shunt (actually BMV-712) is a lifesaver in my caravan. Without it, I would often have almost no idea how much capacity I had left.
However many people DO still get caught after a lengthy period of time without doing a sync at top of charge. Over time it’s reading can become very unreliable without a sync.
I’m guessing your’s would be a fair way out of whack if it hasn’t synced in forty something days.
By the way… do you know when and how the JK BMS recalculates top of charge for it’s SOC reading?
How can your batteries be charged to 100% if one has a higher Ah rating than the other two? (304, 280, 280). I was under the impression that you have to always connect batteries in series or parallel that have the same Ah rating, because the smallest one will limit the capacity of the largest one. How do you keep the two smaller batteries from over charging?
Hi Andy, I did reply to your last message regarding smart controller settings but seems you have not seen it yet. Can you in meantime give me a clue about the smart shunt settings on 2x 100ah lithium at 12v I can't make head nor tail what I'm doing. Greetings from a slightly warmer UK today.
Hello, does anybody know what the shunt shows when connected with a high frequency hybrid inverter like Growatt or Pwrmon China and multi batteries in parallel? I have such configuration abd the shunt is inaccurate in SOC, in total Ah going in the battery., and total discharged. I charge around 1000amps hours and it shows 40 as if measuring only the growatt charge cycle and not other moots I have also in parallel..
Hi Andy. I’m not 100% sure on this but I was under the impression you did not need to run the Bluetooth network if you are running all of your devices into the CERBOGX as you run the DVCC?
When I was a young fellow, people always called me a “Smart Shunt”… this must have been what they were talking about 🤣
Hello Andy , i use this shunt at a 24v sistem , can you please tell me a charged voltage? Many thanks
I've just arranged an Amazon returns on the Smart Shunt after reading a comment on Will Prowse's review. One comment there said that if you log out of bluetooth, when you go back in, it resets the SOC to 100%? Is this correct?
you are the BEST MAN...thanks a lot for info .....Best regards ...sorry for my eng...
Hi Andy. Whenever my Victron Scc reaches FLOAT mode I SYNCHRONIZE the Smart Shunt to 100%. And CALIBRATE current to ZERO since no current flows at this mode. Is that ok? I followed your settings to Absorption=3.45v and Float=3.35v. Timely video btw. The entire ecosystem of offgrid has so many moving parts. Its just impossible to know them all. You are a great help to us.
That is OK, Noel. Just you will hit the Float voltage far earlier than Absorption. How do you do that? The shunt may reset whenever you hit 3.35V which could be 70-80%SOC only.
@@OffGridGarageAustralia Andy, Scc goes to Absorption first before Float.
How to trigger a relay using smart shunt SOC % , as smart shunt 500 doesn't have built in relay, can i trigger 150/45 mppt relay or 100/20 mppt dc output On or OFF ??
For example at 90 % SOC i want trigger some load and at 80 % off.
I also use Ras Pi 4 for VRM any possible way , please help.
Thank You.