diy solar

diy solar

Victron Charge Controller Price Crash

Santa Fe Big Sky said:
Wife was talking to a friend in person and mentioned she was considering buying a particular product. Five minutes later an ad for it popped up in Facebook.
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What if, and this is purely hypothetical, she only mentioned buying the product because she has been seeing ads for them somewhere and didn't even notice. Kind of like when you get a certain type of car, you start seeing them everywhere.
 
cs1234 said:
What if, and this is purely hypothetical, she only mentioned buying the product because she has been seeing ads for them somewhere and didn't even notice. Kind of like when you get a certain type of car, you start seeing them everywhere.
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Awww shucks..that happens all the time nowdays… does anyone real think what one says is private in your home or car or near your phone…they probably know what color they prefer… and what credit card they will charge it on..
No worry’s ….it’s cool .. most of us are all toast anyway…it’s just a matter of when..no biggie.
?……
 
upnorthandpersonal said:
Unless you're in my climate where I can generate about 1kWh a day these days if it's sunny. A difference of 30W (720Wh per day) is a big deal.
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You don't get any PV really in winter, that is just part of the deal for choosing your environment. It isn't perfect here either, NE Iowa is known to be colder and cloudier than other parts of the state. Strong low pressure near the Great Lakes helps bring in the clouds during winter.

Not unusual to go 4 to 5 days in winter with very overcast skies. So you learn to live with it.

upnorthandpersonal said:
But that's the thing, the Victron software reports Watt, not VA, meaning that the efficiency goes up if you would take the actual VA into the calculation and not the Watts displayed/reported.
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Watts refers to real power, VA refers to apparent power. Now, these guys here are smarter than I am, I'm just a simple kinda guy. Read the responses, you want to use watts. https://electronics.stackexchange.c...n-for-large-va-vs-w-difference-in-an-inverter

"It's not normal to calculate power efficiency that way. It has very little to do with VA. Efficiency is power out divided by power in and, VA hardly ever represents the power inputted to a circuit. "
– Andy aka
Dec 27, 2022 at 23:49

So in other words the argument put forth by Victron and it's disciples is everyone else has it wrong, one should use VA.

I have to wonder why this is..................hmmm.........

It is because inductive and capacitive loads will cause lower efficiency and the old fall back catchphrase of using a toaster when measuring efficiency. I don't live in a toaster, I live in a house that has a mix of loads. I have to pump water, run HVAC, refrigerators, freezers, washing machine, dryer even a computer or 2.

upnorthandpersonal said:
My other inverter has an LCD display. Consumption in the milliWatt range. A display won't take up a lot of power, but something like a Cerbo GX is a lot more than just a display.
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Don't worry, I looked it up, I know what the Cerbo and display took (according to marketing brochure) before posting. :ROFLMAO:

The thing with comparing an AIO self consumption to a Victron inverter is the AIO has peripherals and the Victron doesn't. Display is one, SCC is another, fans usually required because it is all one package in a box, it isn't just an inverter.

a Cerbo GX is a lot more than just a display.
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And an AIO is more than just an inverter.
 
Zwy said:
The thing with comparing an AIO self consumption to a Victron inverter is the AIO has peripherals and the Victron doesn't. Display is one, SCC is another, fans usually required because it is all one package in a box, it isn't just an inverter.
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I don't think I ever mentioned comparing to an All in One?
 
Zwy said:
So in other words the argument put forth by Victron and it's disciples is everyone else has it wrong, one should use VA.
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nop victron is not wrong read the spec sheet and there you will find the watts or in other words rfm
and have installed a aio brand easun and those fans are loud af you can hear them tru a wall really not nice.
 
Last edited:
Zwy said:
I don't live in a toaster, I live in a house that has a mix of loads. I have to pump water, run HVAC, refrigerators, freezers, washing machine, dryer even a computer or 2.
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Here in Europe, EN 61000-3-2 requires power factor correction be incorporated into consumer products and most, if not all, homes are near unity.
 
cinergi said:
FYI Victron has told me and I can find reference (e.g. https://community.victronenergy.com...ii-current-values-inaccurate-when-compar.html) that the AC current/wattage metering built into their inverters is NOT sufficiently accurate for discussions such as the one in this thread. I wouldn't draw any conclusions (for better or worse) based on what you're seeing via the Cerbo/VRM/etc.
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Imagine that. :ROFLMAO:

upnorthandpersonal said:
Here in Europe, EN 61000-3-2 requires power factor correction be incorporated into consumer products and most, if not all, homes are near unity.
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Then it must be worse efficiency than what I actually thought, my thoughts were inductive and capacitive loads what causes the poor efficiency reported by users of Victron products.

Good to know, I'll file that away for the next discussion.

upnorthandpersonal said:
I don't think I ever mentioned comparing to an All in One?
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Now it's not comparison to other inverters commonly used by members of this forum? I guess I'll have to stop discussing it then.
 
Some strong discussion points. Seems like everyone has firm grasp of their beliefs and won’t be charged one way or another, no matter what data or real world evidence is shown.

I do appreciate the passion for some to call BS when they see BS (in their eyes).

Are victron units the “most efficient units” on the market, prob not. Do they have rose colors glasses in marketing material sure (isn’t that the point of all marketing material).

IMO are they the best for my needs? From my readings they are. Off grid with minimal load and the need decent surge and minimal idle consumption as 90% of the time loads will be under 100w.

Would I switch to brand XXX if they offered the same thing but 10-20% better efficiency at the same cost? Prob not because that 10-20% savings isn’t worth losing the victron eco system.
 
740GLE said:
IMO are they the best for my needs? From my readings they are. Off grid with minimal load and the need decent surge and minimal idle consumption as 90% of the time loads will be under 100w.
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Same...

740GLE said:
Would I switch to brand XXX if they offered the same thing but 10-20% better efficiency at the same cost? Prob not because that 10-20% savings isn’t worth losing the victron eco system.
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I would at least add it to the inventory! Then again, I don't care about the Victron Ecosystem, which is why I wrote that driver for the Multiplus so I could use it in Grafana.
 
SeaGal said:
That's quite a drop in efficiency from about 1000W to 5000W :eek: Guess they all do that?

I didn't expect to see that running 2 of those at 2500W each would "save" over 600W (or run 3 at 1600W each and "save" 840W)
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Depends on the architecture. Some are much more efficient at higher loads.
 
As I said before, if I was building my solar system "today" I would certainly go all in on Victron which was not available in Canada when I started my adventure. One of the main reasons for that choice is that the company is a solid well established company that won't go "poof" at any point in time. Their products are "MATURE" and not being changed every 3 months (software updates are good but the hardware is consistent) which we do see with many products. If I buy Inverter or SCC from them, and something goes bad in 5 years, I know they will have the same model (updated) or a comparable equivalent that ca just be "dropped in". Call it Peace Of Mind Factor...

Best & Perfect are both terribly subjective and relative.

Victron does all of it's own engineering & design plus their software with several external contributors as well. They do subcontract the manufacturing out to several companies (all over the place) and their QA Testing of everything is quite high because they ensure the products are solid. I do not care if the parts are made in Germany, Belgium, India or China because the subcontractors have to meet spec & pass testing cycles.
 
upnorthandpersonal said:
Yes, but that's only Venus OS, supporting Victron equipment as alternative to the VRM portal. I also want to integrate my MUST equipment, my wood burner, etc.
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You can add additional data sources to the docker once installed. But yes it requires a venusos device like a cerbogx or you can install venusos on your own machine although I'm unsure how to get the vebus connections and such.
 
justinm001 said:
You can add additional data sources to the docker once installed. But yes it requires a venusos device like a cerbogx or you can install venusos on your own machine although I'm unsure how to get the vebus connections and such.
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Yes, exactly - I didn't want the VenusOS side of things in addition. I run this on a WYSE 3040 with a basic Debian install, no docker or anything.
 
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