Victron Energy SmartSolar MPPT 75V 10 amp 12/24-Volt Solar

 

I purchased this for my 2 x 100 W solar panel set up as that is what I thought it was for, 75 Volt / 10 Amp Max. My panels are in Series, 42 Volt with 5.5 Amp output However, I have since learnt that the Watts should be less that 145 Watts, so this is not suitable. I have already thrown out the packaging and original box, so I guess I am not able to return this unit. I have connected it, and I’m hoping it will cope OK, seeing as I only seem to get around 20-40 Watts on a cloudy day. I doubt I will ever get the 200 Watts max. I will see what happens. Anyway, Bluetooth is great and very interesting to see.

 

I purchased this Victron 75/10 MPPT charge controller to charge a SLA battery via a small 100w solar panel. It appears to do the job well. Much better than my cheap PWM controller i was using prior to this. I love the fact this controller is Bluetooth, the Victron app is excellent and shows you the information you want to know, ie watts going in and amps. The SOC is very inaccurate but you are never going to be able to read an accurate SOC without a shunt. The app also informs you of your solar yield, i find this especially helpful. There are much cheaper charge controllers out there but victron is one of the best and the added functions make the price a little bit more worth it for me.

Build quality wise it is excellent – there is no heat sink on this controller as it is the lowest voltage they do, therefore it makes it nice and compact to hide away out of sight. The bluetooth range is ok if you are in the same room, but leave the room the controller is in and i could not get a connection.

I have a much bigger solar setup with lifepo4 batteries, which i use a different brand of charge controller for, i would love to upgrade this to a victron, but the price is just too expensive at the moment for higher Volts/Amperage Victron controllers.

I hope that you found my review helpful.

 

I had been using a ring controller and this didn’t seem to work correctly, seen some reviews on the Victron systems and though what have I got to lose.
it took me about 30 minutes to do the swap over and go through the settings screen, this was easy and simple as there is a lot of info available on the Victron site, all managed through the free app, ohh boy what a difference this made, instant data and charging my batteries at around 10amps at the time.

I find myself sitting watching the app on the smart phone to see how much the batteries are charging, how much sun I’m getting…I would recommend these systems to anyone looking for a good MPPT system along with there solar panels, brilliant bit of kit…

 

Great piece of kit, works beautifully and the Bluetooth app is superb but whoever set up/designed the provided battery profiles needs to go back and look at them again.
I didn’t recognise a single profile offered, all we need is say, Flood, Gel, AGM, Lithium and perhaps a few other exotics.
OK you can go in and set up your own battery profile but it’s really difficult to find these on the web and it’s fiddly and unnecessary.
Come on Victron give us some realistic, workable battery profiles which people recognise.

 

Seems to keep batteries well topped up, much better than a cheaper solar regulator so well worth the expense. Blue tooth easy to set up and it is nice to see the history of what it has done whilst I’m ‘away’.

 

With only 175w of solar panels on my “Solar Shed”, I’ve never wanted it to offset my normal house mains supply, but I did add 816Ah of flooded lead acid battery capacity and a 2.5 Kw mains inverter so that I could keep the fridge, freezer and some LED lights going for a couple of days if we ever get power cuts. On the weeks when the power is solid, I use the “Solar Shed” to do a couple of washing machine loads, and run the electric lawnmower. This has all worked fine in the summer but the old PWM controller that arrived with the panels, was struggling in the winter. So when it also developed an intermittent fault last week, I started researching a better replacement.
The Victron unit is far superior in every respect. Firstly, it harvests about 15% more power at low light conditions than the PWM unit could, and secondly it is amazingly configurable, via its Bluetooth driven link with an App on your smartphone (see pics).
I was particularly pleased to see that it can automatically run an equalisation charge at a voltage of your choice for a defined period after a user configurable period of days that can be over some weeks or months. It also allows you to just run one manually – ideal on a nice sunny day when the batteries are already “Floating” and you just want to get the Specific Gravities of all 18 cells to be nice and uniform.
I have three top tips for you if you want to invest in this top quality controller:-
A). Read the manual and pay careful attention to polarities when you connect the load, battery and PV positives and negatives. The battery is different, see..
B). When you download the APP and run it for the first time, it will automatically request access to Bluetooth itself and “find” the controller – Pass-Code is “000000” (Six Zeroes)
C). If you don’t want the load to be “Permanently on” (The default), then you will have to install and run the App, go to “Settings” (The wee Cog) and change it to “Permanently off”.

 

Our motorhome has a full suite of Victron gear, and it’s amazing. I opted for a smaller charge controller for each of our 2 300w panels, rather than a single, larger controller, and so far this has worked very well.

The charge controllers have an excellent app, which allows setup and monitoring, and also can interface with the VRM.

The load outputs are good, I managed to run most of the systems in the motor home off the load outputs, which is good for monitoring usage and protecting the battery.

 

So far so good, I mounted new solar panel on caravan roof and after buying and mounting a cheap mppt controler from Chinese web site I monitored battery and it was overcharging by a lot so that was 25 wasted. Followed Victron instructions for the 75/10 mppt unit and away it went, I have a DVM permanently mounted so I can easily monitor the battery voltage and for the last 6 weeks the voltage has been spot on the magical 13.8 volts falling overnight to a lower value and then coming back up to 13.8 in the morning. I believe the warranty is longer than the obligatory one year so they must have confidence in their product so if you are spending 150 on a solar panel don’t try to save a few quid on a naff piece of tack it can cost more in the long run.