Victron Energy SmartSolar MPPT 100V 30 amp 12/24-Volt Solar Charge Controller (Bluetooth)

Seems to work fine. I have the SmartSense battery monitor which this uses to get accurate battery voltage and that is really helpful since I have a ~20 wire run from my solar controller to my battery. But having now owned 4 different charge controllers in the last 7-8 years, I dont think Victron is worth the extra $. Heres why: First, you get zero support. Thats right, Victron will only provide support to certified resellers, so if you have a problem and you bought from Amazon guess what? Youre SOL. In my case I believe theres a bug in their charging algorithm, but I literally cannot talk to anyone at Victron directly. (That said their community support is great, but its not the same as actual technical support). Second, some of their really useful features (like being able to monitor charge voltage over time and graph it) only work if you disable screen lock and leave your bluetooth device (phone, typically) connected and running the app. Dont change apps because your graphs will reset. Why cant this run in the background? The unit does have daily stats but that doesnt help me when Im trying to understand why charging isnt cutting out as expected. My personal issue is that I have a LiFePO4 setup (which this device does support), but I want to cut off charging on my setup when the battery hits about 90%. The Victron has several settings to shorten the absorption times, all of which seem to work when I drain the battery and need to recharge it. However if the battery doesnt get drained one day and starts off full, the unit still goes into bulk mode for several hours and ends up topping off the battery. I assume this is a charging algorithm-related problem, but its disappointing behavior and defeats the reason I purchased the device.

When my MPPT arrived, I studied the install & configuation information, reviewed Victrons FAQs, read forum input, etc. and then proceeded to connect the MPPT to my vans house battery & then to the solar panels. The screeenshot, taken from the VicrtonConnect app, with the big fat zero was the result. I spent several days troubleshooting, assuming user error, asked for help on the Victron forums, got a few responses, but nothing worked. Victrons troubleshooting policy for items purchased via Amazon is to contact the Vendor. So, this last Monday, I called Inverter-R-US, explained the situation and the steps I had taken to resolve. The vendor promptly concluded I had a bad MPPT and sent me a new one which arrived on two days later. I connected the new one and the screenshot with the 159 watts is the new results. Much better. From the Victron forums, most people who post similar problems with this MPPT are in fact guilty of missing something or doing something wrong. But this goes to show that once in a while, a device is truly bad & needs to be replaced from the get go.

Victron are the standard in solar charge controllers. This controller is well built. It has been in my campervan for almost 3 years now, and has performed flawlessly. The integral bluetooth allows you to configure the controller, and check the state of charging, all from your phone - no need for displays taking up wall space in an RV! I mounted this under the sofa in my campervan. If it wasnt for the solar panels on the roof, you wouldnt know I had a solar installation. It is very unobtrusive.

I like the bluetooth connection to see what is happening real time. Im not crazy about the fact it doesnt store the history of the charge controller input/output. If you use different devices on it you cant get the same history downloaded. Connecting wires with the screw wire block seems less secure to me. I dont know why most of the companies do it this way. Seems to limit the size of wire and makes it less secure. Ive had wires come out easily. This isnt really a dig at this brand, they all seem to have these screw connectors. The back aluminum plate popped off one day. A whole bunch of sand came out of it; it looked like beach sand. Apparently the inside of unit has sand to help with heat dissipation. Never heard of this before but I read up on it. I thought it was a defect at first but others have experienced the same thing. This shouldnt be an issue for most people since they will have it mounted on a wall but I had been moving mine around a lot and one day it just popped off. It does seem to have affected its performance so far. Time will tell. Im using it with a 100ah LiFePo4 battery and RadioB BMS connected to a Renogy shunt/battery capacity. Also us it to charge up the battery with my solar panel and AC/DC power adaptor.

I built out a 4x4 Sprinter cargo van as a camper and initally used only the alternator charging (with a 30 amp Sterling Battery to Battery charger) and a short power charger to keep my 310 amp hours of house batteries charged up. I didn’t want to drill through the roof to install solar panels there because of the snow that accumulates there after skiing. By itself the snow might not be a problem, but once I start driving it moves back and forth and eventually slides down the wildshield if I have to make a sudden stop. I was worried that would put extra stress on any roof-mounted solar panels, and possibly cause a water leak in the roof. We’ve all seen leaky RVs covered with a tarp, and I didn’t want that fate. So I bought Renogy’s 200 watt solar suitcase panels (without a controller) and connected the MC4 connectors for those panels to the cut off ends of a 10 AWG cigarette lighter plug that was rated for 25 amps 12v. In turn, that 12v recepticle is hard wired to this charge controller. I was worried that 200 watts of solar and a 15amp charge controller wouldn’t provide enough amps to charge up my battery, but it’s more than enough to recharge the overnight usage from my 130L Isotherm Fridge and Espar D4. I have an iPhone XS and the Victron app works well and doesn’t require location permissions like Android. I’m glad I didn’t get the higher amperage models (100/20 or 100/30) because the 200 watt panel is big enough to keep my batteries charged up and the higher amperage models would have taken up too much space.

I have two of these connected to lead-acid deep-cycle batteries. One drives a remote bird-house camera and one powers a pump in a bird bath. They were easy to set up and the instructions are clear. They have enormous programmability. The phone app is great for checking on the battery performance, solar power level, load, etc. There are a couple of features I wish it had. One is more pre-programmed battery types. They offer a few basic battery types and a custom program of gazillions of charging parameters for experts. Im an electrical engineer and could get out the data sheet for my specific battery and program all the parameters, but what a hassle, and what if I make a mistake? It would be nice to have a few more standard lead-acid battery types in the menu. The unit has a streetlight function for turning on a light at night, but I want a general purpose timer that turns on the load in the day. That would be a small amount of software for Victron to add to the unit and the application. I want our birdbath to run only during the day. I could have used a smaller solar panel and smaller battery if this unit had a timer feature. This unit keeps a history of solar power generated and load power consumed that goes back at least a few weeks. I havent looked to see how far back it goes, but its interesting and useful to see how the panels are doing, or if the load is drawing unexpected power. It was also useful to see if my calculations were correct.

So easy to connect, has all the stats easy to access through the App.

Works better than I expected to it does exactly what it says and it works perfect for a battle born battery no problems with it very happy purchase Having built-in Bluetooth helps a lot if you dont have to buy the extra dongle for communication I really like the fact that its customizable you can set the parameters that you would like for your setup which is extremely helpful For whatever reason it seems to produce a little bit more voltage and current then I would expect it to thats probably what its designed to do but its a major Plus to me

I already had one set of panels on a Victron controller. Im very fond of the Bluetooth connectivity to my phone. I can easily see how my system is performing by looking at an app on my phone. So when it came time for another set of panels - Victron controller seemed like a good idea. Still is.

After purchasing a 26$ controller, which seemed to work okay, I decided to upgrade to a bit more professional controller for my simple solar solution so I could have a better view of what was really happening with my 400 watts of solar panels dumping to 2 marine deep cycle batteries. This unit is everything that I expected and much more. The bluetooth interface is amazing. 26$ will get you a charge controller and most likely it will work but with the bluetooth interface (iPhone, IPad, and Mac) on the Victron, I can watch this one work real time along with built in trending. It keeps track of my power generation daily with bar graphs showing peak Watts and Volts per day along with battery charge max and min. I can see, while writing this, I am currently making 301 watts and have been generating for 3h 43m in bulk mode loading the batteries. For me, that is worth the extra money and 5 stars for Victron for making a product that is easy to use and very stable. NOTE: Make sure you size it right. Many different models to chose from to fit your solar size.