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.
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!
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.
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
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)
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..
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
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.
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
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
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.
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.
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?
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
Hi, Andy. I love your videos. Great job. I have a victron smart shunt and I love the features, however, there is one feature I don't understand: the cycle count. It only increments the cycle count by one if the previous discharge was deeper than 60 or 65 % (% SOC). I don't understand how victron thinks this makes sense! Let me illustrate how this is a problem: my battery bank has been cycled between 80% SOC and 100% SOC probably over 50 times but the cycle count is still at 1 !!! Because only once the SOC went below 60% .... that just doesn't make sense to me... it should add up each mini cycle and every time the sum equals a full cycle it should register as a full cycle... right?
Thanks, Omar. Mine also counts micro cycles from 10-20% and back. That's what I do for weeks now during winter and the count is going up. Very slowly of course...
Andy, when sizing a shunt do you add current coming in + current going out, or use them separately? ie a 100A shunt will work with 50A coming from the charge controller + 100A going to the inverter?
Great video as always Andy. Have you looked into the Victron Lynx shunt, I see that it can handle up to 1000A but is there any other difference if I only need 400A as most? They have the Lynx Distributor (biusbar) and Power in also, so maybe it is better if you need several functions as a package?
Is it possible that the differences in the SOC of the three banks is because of the different BMSs? If you averaged the three percentages, it comes very close to the SmartShunt SOC.
Yes, I did the settings when I setup the Multiplus II with the other inverter. Most info should be in this video here already: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-SsTkgoN6ENM.html
great vid,, im having prob with mine,,, i have the absorb at 48.5 and float at 48.0, mine is org lithum bats not your kind,,the prob i have i really dont know what ah i have there used batts were i got them from said there about 1/2 the org ah,, i have it set to that but when it floats it still have wats/amps coming in,im confused ,,im thinking i have more ah than i thought ?
Question for Andy (or others…): Is it feasible to run the 24-port JK BMS with 24 (instead of 16) cells in series? This would yield a combined voltage of 76.8V DC rather than the normal 48V, of course. Aside from the unusual charging voltage, can the JK BMS be configured thus? Otherwise, what’s the use-case for the 24S version of the BMS?
For example, if your building an e-bike battery, you can use more cells in series to make a 71.4 or 96 volt battery which is more common in an e-bike of electric scooter setup. That's probably why they make it to 24s. So it also works with different chemistries, 2.3v LTO battery to 4.2 Li-ions...
Thank you for the vid, so it is 97f here and it is time for blitzed choco chip cookies and salted caramel icecream. swirled together for a sweet treat and a cooling snack on a hot day like this. Certainly not winter here. yet... CCHHEERRSSSSS 🥵🥵🥵
Something I have always wondered is how often you should rebalance your batteries, perform a capacity test to determine amount of degradation, and then recalibrate the shunt with that new capacity? While the shunt is very good at measuring current in and out, it only has the number you gave it, as far as total capacity. It seems that if you don't recalibrate from time to time, the shunt won't be so "smart" anymore.
I agree. All cells must be calibrated to each other, and all batteries must then be calibrated to each other. It's the rule in electric car battery cells. Maybe not so much when you're powering a TV but when you are battling range vs. weight balanced cells is everything. So is cell temperature.
@@dancarney106 - I agree, but it seems like one of the bigger challenges is keeping them balanced. I guess it all starts with very similar internal resistance?
@@jasonbroom7147 The computers that are located inside a vehicles main battery are all focused on one thing. Keeping each of the thousands of cells all within 35 mV of each other. If the cell is under the average of all the cells, then just that cell is charged if a cell is over charged then codes and service warning lights are illuminated on the vehicle dash, so the vehicle pilot is informed. It's incredible how much monitoring is going on in a modern-day electric vehicle. People have no idea. None.
Actually what would you recommend me using for my settings? I’ll have two 230ah lithium batteries after I top balance them anyway. And another question. I won’t have enough bus bars so was thinking I could use 12awg wire and make my own. Would that work?
Hmmm scratching my head ... isn't it perfectly 'normal' that your individual banks may have different load states (where the individual) BMS'es are all correct! .. and the Victron to the outside just shows some sort of 'average' ?? So the question which one is right or wrong is invalid in the first place.
well you wont know which one is correct, unless the bms's communicate with each other and pref to the inverters. this is why modern bms allow stacking and inverter comm. it's not just victron that does this
If the BMSes report three different SOC to the inverter, what could potentially happen 😂. I really don't see any benefit of having a BMS talking to an inverter. Especially not if you have several batteries. That could end in a premature shutdown of the system.
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 :)
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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 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!
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.
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
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.
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
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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'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.
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..
