Victron PowerAssist Demo | How the MultiPlus-II Combines Battery & Shore Power

Hey what's going on guys, welcome back to the channel. On this episode, I'm going to show you a quick demo of the power assist function on the Victron MultiPlus II units or pretty much on most of the Victron units, they're all the same. So, without too much further ado, let's get to it. So, as you can see on the screen right here, we are connected using the Victron Connect app to the Victron Smart Dongle, which is in turn connected to this MultiPlus II unit.

This is a MultiPlus II 12-V 3000 VA unit and as you can see on the screen right here, uh we've limited the AC current input to 9. 3 amps, which is the lowest it'll go on this configuration. Uh why did we do that? Mainly purpose for the demo.

Why would you do that in the future? If you were to connect this thing like your remote power system to you were to take it to somebody's house, you just have a small extension cord or you go to a campsite and you have a smaller outlet than let's just say a 50-A outlet, this is where you would configure that uh AC input because you don't want to tell the inverter that it can draw essentially all 30 amps or 50 amps when you're only connected to a smaller outlet, right? That's going to cause problems. So, as you can see right here on the overview screen, it tells you you are in assisting mode, aka power assist mode.

So, drilling down into it, you'll see the AC output or the AC output the inverter is pushing out is essentially 1400 W ish, right? It's going up and down. Um and then the AC input power coming in from the wall AC in one is about 967 W. So, roughly about 900-ish W is coming in from AC mains power.

So, the rest of that power you need, you know, let's just say roughly around uh I don't know, 400-500-ish uh W that's missing, it's got to come from somewhere, right? Uh that power is being drawn essentially from your battery. So, as you can see on the battery icon, this is a 12-V battery. It's pulling roughly 40-ish amps, 39-42 amps or whatever, from the battery to make up the amount of power it needs to support the load on the inverter.

So, why is this important and why is this cool, okay? It's important because if you were to install a mobile power system, you can essentially take it to any site that you need to take it to and adjust your AC input, right? As we were talking about earlier, you went somewhere and they didn't have 30-amp RV plugs or 50-amp or 30-amp plugs or whatever it was, right? But you wanted to power all your loads, let's just say AC fridge, TV, what whatever you need to power, right?

You can still power all your loads while pulling as much power from the AC mains power that you're connected to and pulling some from your battery. Sure, you won't be charging, right? Your batteries from that connection while you're in power assist mode, but if your if the AC is only on for, you know, let's say 30 minutes at a time or whatnot and then it's off for another 30 minutes or or whatnot, right? Or you just needed, you know, high high draw for a little bit of time, whenever you needed that high draw, it would pull from the battery and then whenever that high draw wasn't needed, it would then charge the battery, right?

That's exactly how that would work. So, let me go ahead and show you here. If I turn off one of the loads, right? So, I just unplugged one of the chargers it was connected to and as you can see or even actually hear, right?

It went from assisting mode to charging mode, right? None of the relays click, none of that lag, any of that stuff, right? Now, all not all, but the power that's coming in from AC mains is going to support the AC output load from the inverter and also charging the battery, right? So, how cool is that?

So, that's how power assist feature works. It's very useful in many cases. Uh I would definitely have something like a servo or a Bluetooth dongle connected so you can control that, especially if you're in a mobile power system. If you're in a permanent install, you probably don't need, you know, that kind of stuff.

But, uh mobile power system, this is going to be very crucial. Uh it's very important to, you know, adjust to exactly what you need, but, you know, the the ability to do that kind of, you know, opens pathways of where you can use these types of systems. And right now, because there's not enough load, the inverter charger is actually in charging mode, right? So, eventually, you know, uh when everything comes out, it'll just be only powering or pass-through power, but the battery's got a good bit of go to charge up.

So, hopefully this helped you guys out. If you have any questions, let us know. Otherwise, have a great day, get back to work, and we'll see you guys next time. >> [music]