Victron - The only choice.

[truckcab79]

18 minutes ago, rusty69 said:

Exactly what I did regarding an inverter I was looking at for someone.Renogy told me that the one I was asking about could not be neutral-earth bonded. I have tried to tell the OP this twice now in this thread, but it has, alas fallen on deaf ears. 

 

Perhaps he is looking for a doer that has done more than just ask the question of the manufacturers. 

 

Who else would one ask, but the supplier or manufacturer for a reliable answer. 

All you’ve added is what ‘might’ or might not be possible with them. No useful information as to what that means or any workaround.  
If indeed there is one.  Clearly others have installed them in boats. It’s not adding anything that’s actually useful to me I’m afraid.   
 

The point of most forums is to ask people with hands-on experience.  Not just someone who once asked a supplier and was told no.  So yes. That’s exactly what I’m looking for.  

Edited December 28, 2023 by truckcab79

[rusty69]

On 25/09/2023 at 14:23, jonathanA said:

my boat came with a sterling 1800W MSW inverter, it runs pretty much anything i've thrown at it, with the exception of  electric toothbrush charger which it fried.  I subsequently bought a sterling charger. both seem perfectly fine been working for over 10 yrs now. 

 

I have a modest 250W solar panel (all I could fit on ) and seller recommended the victron controller with blue tooth.  which I've been very impressed with and wasn't that much extra over other makes.   I'd definitely recommend the victron blue solar stuff and based on that if/when I decide to upgrade or replace the charger/inverted i'd seriously consider victron for all the reasons mentioned. 

 

to answer the OP something like the sterling 1800W MSW inverter i have is probably a reasonable mid market/mid performance unit at reasonable cost. 

Deleted. 

 

Replied to wrong person 

Edited December 28, 2023 by rusty69

[truckcab79]

Just now, rusty69 said:

Then I am sorry to have wasted your time.

 

My comment was meant to reflect (from experience) that certain Renogy inverters could not be neutral-earth bonded. For all I knew, you weren't even aware that such a thing existed but perhaps by mentioning it, it would give you, and others reading this the opportunity to approach the manufacturers regarding the model you were interested in to at least ask the question. 

 

Based on your response above, I suspect you know nothing about N-E bonding, and perhaps don't need to. 

 

 

Still, never mind eh. 

Youre absolutely right hence asking lots of questions and trying to learn more but unfortunately your posts are half the info.  Tell me why it’s an issue and what to do about it would be more useful. And I don’t just mean the knee-jerk of ‘buy Victron’ 

[rusty69]

3 minutes ago, truckcab79 said:

Youre absolutely right hence asking lots of questions and trying to learn more but unfortunately your posts are half the info.  Tell me why it’s an issue and what to do about it would be more useful. And I don’t just mean the knee-jerk of ‘buy Victron’ 

I can only tell you the experience of the one I enquired about. That may not be useful to the one you have in mind. But armed with the information, you can at least ask the question now, where as before, you possibly couldn't. 

 

Good luck with your purchase. 

Edited December 28, 2023 by rusty69

[truckcab79]

1 minute ago, rusty69 said:

I can only tell you the experience of the one I enquired about. That may not be useful to the one you have in mind. But armed with the information, you can at least ask the question now, where as before, you possibly couldn't. 

 

Good luck with your purchase. 

Which with the greatest of respect to you adds nothing to my question. I assume that you don’t know the answer. You asked Renogy, they said no, and you left it there. Doesn’t really help anyone to be honest so complaining that I’ve ignored your info twice is a bit academic because all you’ve done is recount a comment someone once made to you. Doesn’t explain why it’s an issue or how to resolve it.  
 

No offence intended but this seems to be the standard offering on this forum.  Lots of chat but when push comes to shove the hands-on knowledge just isn’t there. It would be easy for me to spend three times the price and just buy Victron but that’s daft.  
 
 

 

 

[rusty69]

33 minutes ago, truckcab79 said:

Which with the greatest of respect to you adds nothing to my question. I assume that you don’t know the answer. You asked Renogy, they said no, and you left it there. Doesn’t really help anyone to be honest so complaining that I’ve ignored your info twice is a bit academic because all you’ve done is recount a comment someone once made to you. Doesn’t explain why it’s an issue or how to resolve it.  
 

No offence intended but this seems to be the standard offering on this forum.  Lots of chat but when push comes to shove the hands-on knowledge just isn’t there. It would be easy for me to spend three times the price and just buy Victron but that’s daft.  
 
 

 

 

And with the greatest respect to you sir, you may not even have be able to ask your question without my comment to begin with.

 

The answer to the N-E bonding question will ultimately come from the manufaturers, and possibly dependant on specific models. The need for doing it can easily be found within the forum using the search function, which is where I found it when I knew nothing about it. I found the advice, with some help, useful enough that I was able to N-E bond my own inverter without killing myself.

 

Clearly if you already know all about N-E bonding of inverters, then my comment was redundant.

 

I suspect if you think this forum is not useful for hands on advice, somewhere like the 12V boating group on facebook may suit your needs better for electrical stuff.

Edited December 28, 2023 by rusty69

[truckcab79]

Just now, rusty69 said:

And with the greatest respect to you sir, you may not even have be able to ask your question without my comment to begin with.

 

The answer to the N-E bonding question will ultimately come from the manufaturers, and possibly dependant on specific models. The need for doing it can easily be found within the forum using the search fuction, which is where I found it when I knew nothing about it. I found the advice, with some help, useful enough that I was able to N=E bond my own inverter without killing myself.

 

Clearly if you already know all about N-E bonding of inverters, then my comment was redundant.

 

I suspect if you think this forum is not useful for hands on advice, somewhere like the 12V boating group on facebook may suit your needs better for electrical stuff.

Cheers. I’m on there already as well. 👍

[magnetman]

I bought some solar panels of a geyser who did house installs.

We got round to discussing what was the best hardware and he said 'get Victron'. I then asked him if he could sell me a Victron MPPT controller as I wanted several and he said 'look online and you will find them for sale'.

 

I think he knew about it.

 

OK Victron are consumer grade products but they are very good. If you want commercial grade products you will pay much more.

 

I've not used any other Victron products and am aware of choice supportive bias so make no claim that they are better than anyone else.

 

A little nervous about the blue colour as this seems to be promoting an idea that the colour of something makes a difference which it obviously doesn't.

 

 

[rusty69]

1 minute ago, magnetman said:

I bought some solar panels of a geyser who did house installs.

We got round to discussing what was the best hardware and he said 'get Victron'. I then asked him if he could sell me a Victron MPPT controller as I wanted several and he said 'look online and you will find them for sale'.

 

I think he knew about it.

 

OK Victron are consumer grade products but they are very good. If you want commercial grade products you will pay much more.

 

I've not used any other Victron products and am aware of choice supportive bias so make no claim that they are better than anyone else.

 

A little nervous about the blue colour as this seems to be promoting an idea that the colour of something makes a difference which it obviously doesn't.

 

 

I've been through quite a few MPPTs from various manufaturers. I am now using Victron, which so far appear far superior to the previous offerings. The incorporation of Victron OS and a cheap raspberry PI make the whole set up so more useable than previous offerings. I also love the fact that having 2 mppts, allows you to connect them together so they 'talk to each other'. Don't much like the blue colour though, and the build quality isn't as good as my last tracer/outback units.

[magnetman]

1 minute ago, rusty69 said:

I've been through quite a few MPPTs from various manufaturers. I am now using Victron, which so far appear far superior to the previous offerings. The incorporation of Victron OS and a cheap raspberry PI make the whole set up so more useable than previous offerings. I also love the fact that having 2 mppts, allows you to connect them together so they 'talk to each other'. Don't much like the blue colour though, and the build quality isn't as good as my last tracer/outback units.

 

I find the choc block screw terminals on the smaller units really quite mickey mouse. They don't seem to be big enough to deal with standard cables which are usually fitted to MC4 connectors.

 

 

 

 

[rusty69]

Just now, magnetman said:

 

I find the choc block screw terminals on the smaller units really quite mickey mouse. They don't seem to be big enough to deal with standard cables which are usually fitted to MC4 connectors.

 

 

 

 

The ones on the 30A flavour are adequate, at best. The ones on the tracer/outback were much more solid. I only swapped to victron because the tracers didn't play nice with the lithium cells. If I had stayed on LA, they would have been fine.

[IanD]

1 minute ago, magnetman said:

I bought some solar panels of a geyser who did house installs.

We got round to discussing what was the best hardware and he said 'get Victron'. I then asked him if he could sell me a Victron MPPT controller as I wanted several and he said 'look online and you will find them for sale'.

 

I think he knew about it.

 

OK Victron are consumer grade products but they are very good. If you want commercial grade products you will pay much more.

 

I've not used any other Victron products and am aware of choice supportive bias so make no claim that they are better than anyone else.

 

A little nervous about the blue colour as this seems to be promoting an idea that the colour of something makes a difference which it obviously doesn't.

 

 

 

An interesting definition of "consumer grade". I was told that Victron's biggest markets are professionally-installed large-scale off-grid and on-grid power systems (tens to hundreds of kW) for houses and businesses, the amount of kit they sell into these dwarfs sales to boats/RVs and similar. Most people would say this is definitely a commercial application... 😉

 

Of course they also sell smaller-scale and cheaper products including (via distributors) to end consumers, but the other clue is what happens when they then contact Victron and say "I have a problem" -- the answer is invariably "look to your dealer/supplier for support", because the intention is that dealers/suppliers who know what they're doing supply and support the kit. If you bought it from the cheapest possible online supplier who has little knowledge (they just flog stuff) and can't offer technical support, you're on your own.

[magnetman]

There is a good Victron forum as well.

[IanD]

Just now, magnetman said:

There is a good Victron forum as well.

There is, and Victron staff post there as well as users, many with a lot of experience as well as clueless newbies. Sounds familiar, doesn't it? 😉

[rusty69]

Just now, magnetman said:

There is a good Victron forum as well.

Hope it has better hands on advice than this place.

[IanD]

13 minutes ago, rusty69 said:

Hope it has better hands on advice than this place.

It certainly has fewer trolls and s*it-flingers... 😉

[GreenHeaven]

victron is good stuff, but it is expensive

[Tracy D'arth]

On 28/12/2023 at 17:37, rusty69 said:

The ones on the 30A flavour are adequate, at best. The ones on the tracer/outback were much more solid. I only swapped to victron because the tracers didn't play nice with the lithium cells. If I had stayed on LA, they would have been fine.

The terminal blocks on many Victron products are undersize. I have had several to repair where the blocks have burnt off the pcb doing a lot of damage.

[rusty69]

1 minute ago, Tracy D'arth said:

The terminal blocks on many Victron products are undersize. I have had several to repair where the blocks have burnt off the pcb doing a lot of damage.

Is that down to user error though? Not clamped in tight enough maybe causing high resistance and subsequently heat. 

[Tracy D'arth]

43 minutes ago, rusty69 said:

Is that down to user error though? Not clamped in tight enough maybe causing high resistance and subsequently heat. 

In my opinion, not solely due to poor connection. Several have burnt off the terminal block tails that are soldered into the pcb. I suspect the usual failure, holes too large and the solder cracks in a ring around the pin. Possible a brittle solder failure.

When you consider that on a inverter/charger these terminal pins carry the full feed through mains current, they look to be very thin in relation to 2.5mm cable used for connections.

[magnetman]

That is my one complaint as well but not had a failure. 

 

It would be interesting to know what tool people use to do up the screws. 

 

If one uses a normal electrical screwdriver it is hard to put enough load on to break the connections but people might have things like socket sets with screwdriver attachments in which case it is easy to overtighten. 

 

 

Edited January 15 by magnetman

[dmr]

Interesting comments. The Victron manual specifies a torque for the connecting block screws, and also a duration for how long that torque is applied (????).

This does rather suggest that they know things are a bit marginal.

I've got quite a lot of tools but that does not include a torque screwdriver....not needed one yet.

[magnetman]

The cheap electrical screwdrivers are quite interesting because the material is relatively soft and the wedge end will bend round rather than overtighten the screw. 

 

I initially thought this was a poor quality problem but it might be deliberate. Perhaps better to lose a £1 screwdriver than damage whatever is being fastened. 

These ones 

 

[nicknorman]

Is there some cross purpose discussion conflating the DC connectors with the mains AC connectors?

[dmr]

It's the DC screw terminals that concern me. I am thinking about a Victron DC-DC thingy as a better way combining the starter and domestic alternators but putting 30 amps through a screw terminal mounted on a PCB does feel like the upper end of sensibility.