Victron Blue Smart 12/20 - help!

[bartman]

I've had this charger for over a year, and other than making sure it was ok for the battery type I haven't tweaked the default settings until now. Until recent months we haven't called upon it to do much, the batteries weren't being drained below about 85% SoC as we were using a 3 way fridge on gas when off grid, and generally when we wanted to charge our e-bikes we were on hookup. So when we re-connected to 230v either on a site or at home, the batteries weren't very low.
On our recent trip around France, we were using the new 12v compressor fridge as well as recharging the bikes, so when getting to a hookup after a couple of days off grid the SoC was sometimes as low as 60%. I then discovered that however low the SoC was, the charger was only on Absorption for 30 minutes. By the time it had done the float stage, it went onto storage with still only about 85-90% showing on the SoC meter, sometimes lower. The solar was still contributing of course, but it didn't seem right to me. I have gone into the settings and changed the default absorption time to 1 hour, I couldn't see any other way to force it to continue charging.
I can't figure out how the charger calculates that the batteries are fully charged - surely it can't just rely on voltage.
I have 2x 110ah Expedition Plus lead carbon batteries in parallel, a total solar of 300w, with an MPPT controller. The MPPT controller, and SoC meter and its shunt are not Victron products. I did wonder whether that was an issue.
Can any of the Victron experts on here help me on this?

 

[wildebus]

I presume this is the IP22 model?
What I would try is instead of using a charge profile, set the voltages for float and storage to the same as the absorption voltage, so around 14.4V. That could be a quick way to get a charge into your batteries from the IP22 before you look into the problem with more investigation later on.
So end up with setting like this ....

To get those settings, go into VictronConnect; click on the gear icon top right.
Then scroll down to 'Advanced Settings' and toggle on.
Then click on the 'Advanced Battery Settings'
In those settings, choose 'User Defined' for Battery Preset.
You can then tap on each of the voltage settings and change to whatever you want.

If you do do as above, I would not leave the charger on overnight or once the battery monitor says 100% or thereabouts. (you haven't said what is telling you the SOC. I am assuming it is accurate, but battery monitor values are at the end of the day just based on maths and not neccessarily a true reflection of the battery SOC).

There can be a conflict between chargers when one is providing an absorption-level voltage (14.4V for example) and so the next charger being switched on doesn't think it needs to do anything so goes into a float mode early. Setting the charger voltages as above could get around that but I would regard that as a temporary workround to get your batteries charged.

The only time I have seen this kind of behaviour where a mains charger goes right to float (or storage if available) is on the Victron Multipluses occasionally and switching it on and off corrects that. I don't think this is your issue though.

 

[bartman]

OK thanks, I know how to get to those settings, I think that's how I changed the default absorption time from 30 mins to 1 hour.
The meter I got some years ago from AliExpress - TR16, I think it's been mentioned here before. It has always seemed accurate to me, and is correctly calibrated as far as I can make out.
I'll have a look at the settings later perhaps.....when I can bear to venture out of the house and into the heat - I can't access the bluetooth link from inside the house!
I probably don't need the workaround at the moment, because the solar will charge the batteries eventually. I'm just a bit concerned about the winter months, especially if we venture up to Scotland. I've done quite a bit of online searching but can't find a permanent answer

 

[MERL]

The first thing I'd do is perform a hard reset. Microprocessors regularly get corrupted and turning them off and on again is needed.
Remove solar power by turning off a switch between panels and controller, if there's no switch then pull a fuse in the same line and if no fuse either then remove the positive solar cable from the unit and tape it up temporarily.
Repeat for the output to the battery, there should always be a fuse at least that can be removed. Check that the SCC is completely dead.
Leave for 20mins, re connect the battery, re connect the panels. Check the app to make sure the battery type and any other chosen parameters haven't changed.

 

[bartman]

Thanks Merl, but isn't that process more applicable to the solar controller?