Finally got my MPII 12/3000/120x2 in and got it installed and working. Why didn't I get this in the first place?
Hookup is easy:
AC in from my shore power, AC out to main panel. That's it. No sub panels, no transfer switches. Other than 6/3 Romex being a beast to work with and the Victron AC connectors being a finicky, is was a pretty easy.
DC hookup from bus bars (used 2/0) and the chassis ground.
That's it. It's ready to do great things.
But I really wanted the GX display, too, so I hooked up a Cerbo GX comm box and a GX display. I also hooked up a multi control panel to make it easy to turn on and off. Turns out that was brilliant for another reason (more on that). Also hooked up the Victron smart shunt and Victron smart solar charger controller.
First test was to get it to turn on. The three way switch on the MPII itself has Sanskrit labels and I had no idea what symbol meant what. So I read the manual. Nope, nothing in there. So I went on the internet. Nope, nothing there. So I guessed and flipped it to the double line setting and oila!, it powered up.
Now I get to see the GX display in action.
This is on batteries with all the AC breakers on. How cool is that display? The 217W is the fridge cooling, 2 TV's in standby, the stick vac charging and the King WiFi thingy. With everything off, the MPII draws 8W, so not too bad. You can also see the solar input.
I turned on the microwave and that worked great. 1300W I believe. Turned off the micro and turned on the rear 15,000 BTU A/C. I have a soft start on it. About 400W for the fan only and then 1,000W once the compressor kicked in. Won't be running the A/C off the batteries, but nice to know I can. The only thing that would not run off the inverter was the fireplace on high. It drew 900W on low and on high I quickly saw 3000W+ before the main breaker tripped. That thing must be a hog. Will have to see what it draws once I get hooked to a 50A service.
Let's hook up the genset. 1800W Champion inverter genset. When I tested it before, I could run the A/C but just the A/C. I could not run the A/C and the fridge, which was a bummer.
Hooked it up with no AC loads. Here's a pic of the display while charging the batteries:
Nothing revolutionary here. But wait for the best part: Power Share! When I turned on the fridge and the rear a/c, the genset cutoff again. But wait, this fancy thing is supposed to assist the generator (or shore power) with some inverter help. Turns out I needed to adjust the input current limit, which is really easy to do since I have a multi control panel:
Hard to see but that bottom panel is the multi control for the MPII. It doesn't do much, but it does make it easy to adjust the current limit from shore/gen power. You can do this in the GX display, but it takes a lot of selecting things.
I set the current limit from the genset at 10A (it was at 50A which is why it shut off). Now I turned on the fridge and A/C at the same time and it all worked. The MPII was providing help to the little genset with some watts from the inverter. This is what the display looked like:
See where it says assisting? The genset is providing 763W and the inverter is providing 468W. How cool is that? The Champion could have provided more, but I had limited it to 10A to keep it quiet. Granted, I am pulling 24A from the batteries, but now I don't have to buy a bigger or another genset to run the A/C and fridge.
That feature alone is the coolest thing ever. It is neat to watch all the Victron stuff work together. It's always adjusting between shore/genset, AC loads, DC loads, charging the batteries and using solar. Victron got this one right, for sure.
Here's the schematic for the whole system:
(We're just getting started!)
Linear Mode
