Victron tantrum

[Tracy D'arth]

This weeks oddity from the towpath.

 

A boater has a 24v Victron inverter charger combination.

He can get power either from his shore line or the inverter. It charges his batteries when connected to the shore. The inverter shuts down then as it should.

 

It has worked fine for a long while.

The one night whilst on the shore line it starts to hum loudly and gets hot. Unplugging the shore line it drops to being an inverter only and shuts up. He now has power.

But the shore line will no longer power the boat when it is in charge only mode.

Most odd, worried that it sounds expensive.

 

Disconnecting shore line and switching everything to off, reconnect and everything is working normally again !

 

Any ideas what causes this tantrum?

[Jackofalltrades]

Could be anything from a shore line voltage spike or interruption or frequency wobble or a parameter that the Victron programmer never thought of caused the system to say I'm Not Doing This Anymore (AKA a bug).  Sounds as though a reset fixed it - does it run on Microsoft Windows?!  See if it happens again. If not, well, you've looked at it so just claim the credit and send him the bill.

 

[Tracy D'arth]

11 minutes ago, Jackofalltrades said:

Could be anything from a shore line voltage spike or interruption or frequency wobble or a parameter that the Victron programmer never thought of caused the system to say I'm Not Doing This Anymore (AKA a bug).  Sounds as though a reset fixed it - does it run on Microsoft Windows?!  See if it happens again. If not, well, you've looked at it so just claim the credit and send him the bill.

 

For suggesting a reset, - No charge.

[Jen-in-Wellies]

Does it use the sort of plugs/sockets below for getting the shore lead in, or the mains out?

If the contact starts to break down inside, things can get very buzzy and warm, with even magic smoke escaping and melted plastic. The internal contacts can corrode, or the weight of the wire can partially pull the plug out, leading to poor contact, heating and oxidation. Happened on a neighbours boat and now happening on mine. I have a new set on order. Possible to do yourself if you are happy to partially dismantle the bottom plate of the inverter and know what bits not to touch! Relatively cheap to solve if it is, compared with some Victron faults. Symptoms sound similar to what you are hearing. If the inverter has hard wired mains connections, rather than plugs and sockets, then ignore.

Jen

[Tracy D'arth]

3 minutes ago, Jen-in-Wellies said:

Does it use the sort of plugs/sockets below for getting the shore lead in, or the mains out?

If the contact starts to break down inside, things can get very buzzy and warm, with even magic smoke escaping and melted plastic. The internal contacts can corrode, or the weight of the wire can partially pull the plug out, leading to poor contact, heating and oxidation. Happened on a neighbours boat and now happening on mine. I have a new set on order. Possible to do yourself if you are happy to partially dismantle the bottom plate of the inverter and know what bits not to touch! Relatively cheap to solve if it is, compared with some Victron faults. Symptoms sound similar to what you are hearing. If the inverter has hard wired mains connections, rather than plugs and sockets, then ignore.

Jen

Good shot, I'll get him to check that. Thanks, you may well be on to something there.

[Jen-in-Wellies]

20 minutes ago, Tracy D'arth said:

Good shot, I'll get him to check that. Thanks, you may well be on to something there.

A general going through of all the internal mains connections with a screwdriver is also worthwhile to make sure none have rattled loose. Incoming mains and 24V completely powered down and an insulated screwdriver obviously! It is possible to easily trace them from the input through to the relay that does the fast changeover to inverter produced mains. With the symptoms, it can't be after that relay.

Edited March 23, 2021 by Jen-in-Wellies

[blackrose]

2 hours ago, Tracy D'arth said:

This weeks oddity from the towpath.

 

A boater has a 24v Victron inverter charger combination.

He can get power either from his shore line or the inverter. It charges his batteries when connected to the shore. The inverter shuts down then as it should.

 

It has worked fine for a long while.

The one night whilst on the shore line it starts to hum loudly and gets hot. Unplugging the shore line it drops to being an inverter only and shuts up. He now has power.

But the shore line will no longer power the boat when it is in charge only mode.

Most odd, worried that it sounds expensive.

 

Disconnecting shore line and switching everything to off, reconnect and everything is working normally again !

 

Any ideas what causes this tantrum?

 

What causes it is over-complicated, highly sophisticated equipment that's far too complex for it's own good and has no place on boats. (Other opinions may vary).

 

I say this after uninstalling a neighbour's expensive new Victon combi which also stopped working on shore power. He sent it back to the supplier and got it checked and found there was "nothing wrong with it". We re-installed it and again found that it wouldn't work. The guy was going spare - he was a liveaboard and the failing Victron meant he had no shore power and fairly knackered batteries which he'd been meaning to replace. Weeks went by with him running his engine when onboard and sometimes staying at a friend's place, as well as arguing with the Victron supplier. 

 

One day we were informed by the marina operators that they were having to get the electricians in to rectify some voltage issues and we should expect a few power cuts. I stuck my simple mains power supply meter into the wall and found that the voltage was around 265v (I can't remember exactly what it was). It hadn't occurred to me that my neighbour's issues could have been supply related - as much as people slag off Sterling products my Sterling battery charger was running fine. Once the mains supply had been fixed the Victron started working again and he had shore power.

 

Simple is best on boats - separate charger and inverter so that if your inverter packs up, everything doesn't stop working.

Edited March 23, 2021 by blackrose

[Jen-in-Wellies]

1 hour ago, blackrose said:

I stuck my simple mains power supply meter into the wall and found that the voltage was around 265v (I can't remember exactly what it was).

We had a similar issue here. The mains supply voltage right on and sometimes above the maximum in the supply specification. Some peoples combi boxes, especially Victron objected to it. Eventually, after one of the boaters, an electronics engineer, did a lot of monitoring and a lot of nagging, the transformer supplying the marina was found to be faulty and replaced.

[billh]

I fixed a Victron unit several years ago with similar symptoms. Inside the unit are 3 mains connections (L,N& E) soldered to through holes on  the printed circuit board. I think it was the neutral,blue wire had become disconnected at the board- a dry joint though it was not visible. Re-soldering all the joints fixed the problem. It  may have been caused by heat build up at the joint causing the dry joint. Similar problems occur in central heating boilers where the integral electronics suffer from heat cycling near the hot parts of the boiler.

[Jen-in-Wellies]

12 hours ago, billh said:

I fixed a Victron unit several years ago with similar symptoms. Inside the unit are 3 mains connections (L,N& E) soldered to through holes on  the printed circuit board. I think it was the neutral,blue wire had become disconnected at the board- a dry joint though it was not visible. Re-soldering all the joints fixed the problem. It  may have been caused by heat build up at the joint causing the dry joint. Similar problems occur in central heating boilers where the integral electronics suffer from heat cycling near the hot parts of the boiler.

Solder joints can fail through fatigue. Repeated strain on them from mechanical movement, or heat expansion and cooling. Happens at very low frequencies, rather than high cycle fatigue that you see in structural metals. Could well be what you saw there. Leads to an intermittent joint. Another thing to look out for. Sorry, this sort of thing was part of my job for a number of years back in the '90's and I can still bore for England on the subject!

Jen

Edited March 24, 2021 by Jen-in-Wellies

[Jen-in-Wellies]

The replacement plug and socket for the mains in on my Victron combi arrived today. Replacement is fiddly, with several very small nuts and washers to remove and replace, all of which I dropped at least once, but eventually they were in. The live and neutral pins on the fixed combi side connector were black and obviously quite eroded. All seems to be working fine again now, with no nasty buzzing noises, or the changeover relay chattering between pass through and inverter mode. I have cable tied the mains in arctic wire so its weight isn't hanging on the plug. Hopefully delay this happening again.

Jen