Victron reliability

[Andy]

I was speaking to my installer who was having trouble getting a Victron Inverter as his supplier had stopped stocking Victron Quattro. They had issues though I am not sure if that is reliability or other.

Has anyone here got long term experience of the Victron equipment? I am about to drop a lot of money on a Victron setup but little things like that make me nervous.

[Stinsy]

Victron is premium-priced kit that is very well regarded for reliability. Even if a lot of it is made in India these days rather than Netherlands.

What made you chose Victron over much cheaper alternatives?

[Andy]

There are many requirements that led me to Victron. My main reservations are a few stories of the inverters exploding/catching fire. Despite a good reputation based on use in the maritime environment they don't have an ip rating which is strange as most other manufacturers are reasonably well protected. If some big suppliers in the uk are no longer stocking Victron then will It be a problem getting things fixed down the line?

• The main things that I need are the ability to cover our usage almost 100% for 6 months of the year. I modelled the household usage for a year with the Victron and the best cost/benefit is about 18kW of generation and almost 40kWh of storage. We are high users of electricity. This means covering the night usage and charging the car as its generally at work with my wife or me during the sunlight hours. Therefore I chose the 10kVa model. Most other manufacturers don't go this high. This will also allow me to time shift the Economy 10 in the winter giving me even greater savings. It was 7p in the cheap period until recently. Now it is 18p :<

• The ability to work with my existing SolarEdge inverter.

• The ability for me to work on the DC side and add more panels or batteries in the future. It is easy to use pylontech with the Victron setup.

I did look at the Sunny Island SMA set up but I think when I priced it up it came to even more than the Victron one.

Most other manufacturers either didn't allow enough output, or didn't allow paralleling devices. The Victron documentation seems to be top notch and I like the modular approach allowing me to easily fix things that eventually blow up. Hopefully they will still interoperate between their devices in 10 years time.

[AlBargey]

"a few stories of the inverters exploding/catching fire." hmm, really

We've had a Multiplus running off grid (boat) from 2013-2021 sold on only to upgrade to an 8Kva Quattro since then, no problems with them ever, sometimes if Victron release a majour new software or update the Remote monitoring portal a few minor things may not work for a while, as always if unsure stick with the latest stable versions until beta's are tested, but there is an active Victron community forum, I noticed a bug on a new release, mentioned on the forum and it was fixed a few days later, not sure many other/ any companies selling inverters would do that.

I think you'd have to be very unlucky set fire to one, probably only by wiring it up to the rest of the system incorrectly. They are a fairly niche brand and expensive, but tbh they are well engineered and worth it if you want a reliable system with amazing functionality, but maybe not a big seller or worth stocking for a more grid tied oriented seller.

Energy Solutions (ES Store) are one of, or the largest UK sellers, and will give good prices if you ask.

I wouldn't bother with any other brand for our main system inverter needs, but we're on a boat, however Victron stuff really is a well thought through and expandable ecosystem used for many high end and specialist systems.

[billi]

Hi ,
I would be surprised if that reliability has changed from an off grid supplier for boats (now range has extended) , as my decision at the time to go for 2 3000kva Multi Plus in parallel , was the fact that on a boat in the Atlantic , the equipment and support should be good


Wasnot proven wrong , even one of the units failed after nearly a decade so the one that was left over , was then hard to pair with the newer Models of the Multi Plus , but we figured out that the one is sufficient to run the house


Billi

[Stinsy]

There are many requirements that led me to Victron. My main reservations are a few stories of the inverters exploding/catching fire. Despite a good reputation based on use in the maritime environment they don't have an ip rating which is strange as most other manufacturers are reasonably well protected. If some big suppliers in the uk are no longer stocking Victron then will It be a problem getting things fixed down the line?

• The main things that I need are the ability to cover our usage almost 100% for 6 months of the year. I modelled the household usage for a year with the Victron and the best cost/benefit is about 18kW of generation and almost 40kWh of storage. We are high users of electricity. This means covering the night usage and charging the car as its generally at work with my wife or me during the sunlight hours. Therefore I chose the 10kVa model. Most other manufacturers don't go this high. This will also allow me to time shift the Economy 10 in the winter giving me even greater savings. It was 7p in the cheap period until recently. Now it is 18p :<

• The ability to work with my existing SolarEdge inverter.

• The ability for me to work on the DC side and add more panels or batteries in the future. It is easy to use pylontech with the Victron setup.

I did look at the Sunny Island SMA set up but I think when I priced it up it came to even more than the Victron one.

Most other manufacturers either didn't allow enough output, or didn't allow paralleling devices. The Victron documentation seems to be top notch and I like the modular approach allowing me to easily fix things that eventually blow up. Hopefully they will still interoperate between their devices in 10 years time.

To be frank I think the system you have specified is overkill. By a lot!

I have a 5-bed house, occupied by 2 adults, 2 children, and a dog. We have a PHEV, a marine aquarium, an induction hob, 2x electric ovens, a garden office (electrically heated), and everything else you could imagine. I have c. 5kW of PV, a 3.6kW inverter, and 11kWh of (usable) battery storage.

Would I like a bit more solar? More battery? A bigger inverter?

Sure.

But frankly I don’t need them. And if you don’t mind me being blunt: nor do you!

Unless you’ve got something very unusual going on: 10kWp of solar, a 5kW inverter, and 20kWh of batteries should be plenty.

Also have a look at the Octopus Go electricity tariff. 4hrs of 7.5p/kWh.

Don’t get me wrong, we like big setups round here. And it’s your money, if you want to go overboard, be my guest. Just that I’m not convinced you’ll see the benefit of such a huge system.

[Andy]

To be frank I think the system you have specified is overkill. By a lot!

I am up for bluntness. I forgot to mention we had 8 days without power this year due to the storms so this setup will also give us the ability to run our water/lights etc in the event of a power cut in the winter.

I have gone back to my model repeatedly to make sure it is correct. It is based on 15 minute usage chunks from the last year. We use in the region of 22,000kWh to 24,000kWh a year (depending on the harshness of the winter). So although the present 6.4KW of generation is giving us 5500kWh per year, the increased generation and battery will take us up to 13000kWh used from 16300kWh generated (maybe slightly more as the current setup clips). We are using 95% of the current generation as it is without batteries.

I found that for a while adding more panels and batteries makes little difference to the pay back time but when looked at over 20 years the savings are significant as I will continue to save the increased initial expenditure. The battery and panels are closely tied. If I reduce only the number of panels then the payback time increases a lot. After a while it becomes a point of diminishing returns. Over 20 years i am effectively locking in at roughly 13 p per kWh if only considering the solar generation. However I will also save from time shifting the E10 in the winter. Time shifting will currently save a further £600 a year. Pay back on Current prices is looking at a little over 8 years. Octobers forecast prices will make it potentially 4 - 6 years. I don't believe prices will come back down significantly for a while so this setup makes sense now fingers crossed.

The household use is roughly 6000kWh per year each on
Car
Heating
General use (mower, servers,kids etc)
Everhot cooker ( I’m not allowed to get rid of that and that is what probably changes the numbers the most)

Also have a look at the Octopus Go electricity tariff. 4hrs of 7.5p/kWh.

I would have considered octopus but we have no smart meter signal in our area. Despite lots of phone calls there seems to be no forecast for it to be added Unfortunately that also rules out looking at Ripple.

[Andy]

The thing I am not sure about is with heavy usage how long can I expect the Victron inverter to last? It would be emptying the battery (37kWh) most days and then cycling the batteries 2-3times a day in the depths of winter timeshifting.

It seems the average for solar inverters is 15 years but can I expect it be less for the Quattro?

[AE-NMidlands]

I would have considered octopus but we have no smart meter signal in our area. Despite lots of phone calls there seems to be no forecast for it to be added Unfortunately that also rules out looking at Ripple.

Is that right?
Ripple credits are just applied to your Octopus account, and you don't have to have a smart meter for that.
Obviously it rules out a TOU tariff, except probably an Economy 7 one. It may not even stop you having an export meter.
A

[Andy]

I would have considered octopus but we have no smart meter signal in our area. Despite lots of phone calls there seems to be no forecast for it to be added Unfortunately that also rules out looking at Ripple.

Is that right?
Ripple credits are just applied to your Octopus account, and you don't have to have a smart meter for that.
Obviously it rules out a TOU tariff, except probably an Economy 7 one. It may not even stop you having an export meter.
A

You are right, in that I could have a dumb meter on Octopus. but last time I checked they wouldn't let me have E10 which would mean my annual costs would have been much higher on their default tariff. It would seem that the 1% of us without the ability to have a smart meter will be losing out in the future. The government relies on the popular misconception that 1% is a small number!

When I've looked at the numbers, I am better off investing in the panels/batteries and saving on the metered costs rather than just being paid for the export on a Ripple wind turbine. This works in my situation as I have the space for the panels and hopefully I don't intend to move.