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

Im no electrician, so I didnt know this had to be programmed. I thought I could just connect my solar panels and battery to the controller and it would do the rest. It worked fine like that for two months, then my batteries dropped to 0% with no real reason. Its still a mystery! You have to install the app for the device and input the battery settings via bluetooth. Theres no other way to do it. But after that, its been working great with my setup.

This solar charge controller comes with Bluetooth and is a bit higher in price than the competition, but for good reason. Victron makes high quality products and backs them up with a 5-year warranty and support. You can adjust the amount of power it delivers to your batteries too. I have 800w of panels in a somewhat low light area and Im able to bring in a solid 430w of power at the 15A charge setting (max for this controller) even in low light. Just dont go over the Voltage rating. 100V is a HARD limit, meaning if you surpass it, it will damage the controller. Ill need to upgrade it soon so I can get all the available power from my panels. I also love the integration between the different products and the open source nature of the company. The fact I can use a Raspberry Pi to run Victrons Venus OS and any good quality USB to TTY serial adapter to connect it all is a HUGE win for Victron. The phone app is also well designed and they even offer free logging of your data to their VRM web portal. Ill be coming back to Victron for more stuff in the near future.

These chargers are so versatile, especially when paired up with a simple 30-ish Volt power supply. Yes, Its a solar charger, but what most folks dont realize is that when used with a power supply you can charge nearly any 12 or 24 volt battery at any current rate from 1-15A that the power supply will support. Ive been using Victron Solar chargers for about five years. Back then they had external Bluetooth dongles to communicate with them. I never cease to be amazed at how well engineered and supported they are. Firmware updates are automatic via your cellphone and the VictronConnect app. The only caveat that Ive found with the new ones with the internal Bluetooth module is that the signal range is more limited. Other than that there is a lot of functionality built into one unit without the headache of extra parts. Put some SAE or PowerPole pigtails on the unit and make up a few adapters and youre ready to connect to nearly any kind of automotive, power equipment, or RV battery. The built-in data logging is a big plus in trying to diagnose charging system problems or determining the state-of-charge. You can also pair these up to increase your charging rate.

I am going to mount this Victron 75/10 Solar Charge Controller on the firewall of my boat. I have a 50 watt solar panel I will be using to keep my battery topped off while in storage. The app was easy to download and after 2 minutes it was done updating itself. The charge controller only took a few minutes to install. In my testing of this solar charge controller over the last two weeks, it has worked better then expected. I am very happy with it and will only be buying Victron in the future. I am using the streetlight function and the load connection to run a 10 watt led light bulb while the boat is in storage. I keep the boat on the side of my house and there is no light there. Now, using the boats battery, the light comes on at night and goes off at sunrise. It only drains the battery a little during the night. Then, the next day, the solar panel charges the battery up to full and maintains it in float mode perfectly. By the way, Im using the QILIPSU Hinged Cover Junction Box, - 150 x 150 x 90mm/5.9 x 5.9 x 3.5(L*W*H) size box. The box seems like it was custom built to fit my Victron 75/10 Solar Charge Controller. It is watertight, made of thick plastic and has stainless steel clasps. Price was very good for the quality.

I purchased one of these for a project on a golf cart. After installing this controller, I am impressed, to say the least. A tablet is being used as the front end along with the VictronConnect software. The software is very simple and easy to read, and also very accurate. There was some talk of weak bluetooth connection, but I still took the chance being I was going to use this in a golf cart, so of course it would reach the 3 feet to the tablet. But, low and behold, I can reach this device from over 20 feet, through three walls. I am on the couch, the cart is in the garage....wow. This was also tested while the cart was out in the yard soaking up rays. You could see exactly what the charge controller was doing, so cool. I will be adding reviews for the other VictronEnergy items I purchased to work with this device. They all network together and keep things in sync when you have concerns with low voltages, or battery temperatures. Such a peace of mind.

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.

Used this charge controller with a 175 watt panel at 12 volts. It feeds the line in. The battery out goes to a dual Nissan Leaf module hooked up in series (16 volts). The load on the charge controller goes out to a voltage regulator to step it down to 12.8 volts and out to a series of USB ports and 12 volt lighters. Programmed the charge controller to 4 volts per battery cell at a max (16 volts, 64 ah). Used the lithium ion preset adjusted slightly. On the load output I set the limit to shut off the load when the voltage on the battery gets below 12.5 volts and stay turned off until the voltage on the battery rises up to 15.85 volts. In other words, this one box has made my setup thoughtless and automatic. So in cases where my fridge or other loads drains the battery to the minimum it will turn off the battery output until it charges enough to last the night without solar adding voltage. The bluetooth part is nice just to make programming easy and gather statistics. Cant really complain about anything on the box or the functionality. It just works and includes enough options to make it seem like magic.

Solid quality.

I highly recommend this product. Just returned from a 63 day camping trip during which the Victron 20 Amp controller worked flawlessly. 60 of our 63 day trip were without shore power and relied on our 100 watt solar panel. While I have a generator, there was never a need to use it to charge our batteries. The Victron controller was part of an upgrade I did that replaced a cheap PWM controller, moved the controller from the solar panel to the battery box, and added 8 gauge wires from the controller to the batteries. The Victron controller charged my two group 27/66 amp hour batteries more quickly and more deeply than the PWM controller. My energy into the batteries from my solar panel now always exceeds my energy out (I track cumulative watt/hours). I could also run my fantastic fan during the day and my batteries would still receive an excellent charge. These MPPT controllers charger more rapidly than PWM by converting excess volts to additional amps. The Victron controller consistently stepped up the amps coming from the solar panel by as much as .7 amps. Excellent product!

I really expected to like the Victron Smart Solar. I already own the 100/15 Blue Solar plus bluetooth dongle, and have good results with it. However, after struggling with the Smart Solar I was disappointed and returned it. In my view its a step backward from Blue Solar. If youre thinking of buying the 75/15 Smart Solar, you may want to reconsider and get the 75/15 Blue Solar and buy the external bluetooth dongle. There is really no benefit to the Smart Solar over the Blue Solar + BT dongle. You might save $10-$20, but you end up with an inferior product in many other respects. First, the integrated bluetooth range is much less than the BT dongle. Were talking 5 feet vs. 20 to 30. This also gets to the heart of my main gripe: Victrons choice of Bluetooth transceiver. Theyre using newer BLuetooth Low Energy technology (BLE) vs older but more widely supported BT 4.0, as used in the external dongle. In my view it wasnt a good move. BLE, is not supported by the majority of BT enabled devices. If you want to use iOS or Android, be aware that even if they have BT, they will likely NOT work with the Smart Solar bluetooth! Obviously this isnt a good selling point and Victron sales literature doesnt warn customers about this ahead of time. Youll end up downloading their app and get frustrated trying to connect to the controller, and eventually learn that your 1 year old device wont work with it. Nearly every device in the world with BT will work with BT 4.0, but Victron went with the BT low energy and gave up compatibility with the majority of the worlds devices. Was that a smart decision? Well they saved a few cents per controller, and I suppose low energy in theory saves some power. But, the charge controller is NOT lacking for power. Its either getting power from a PV array or a presumably large battery, not a tiny batteries where BLE might be useful. I would much rather have 20-30 foot range and use a few more micro watts of power than need to stand 5 feet from the controller. And youll find with Android, that BLE *requires* that you enable location/GPS for the Victron Connect app to work! No kidding. Victron says they dont care about your location, and probably dont. But youll need to accept that and enable location services to use their app with Smart Solar. With Blue Solar and the external dongle its not necessary. This is forced on everyone by Google/Android not Victron, but again, the choice of using BLE was Victrons. Finally, IMO the 100/15 is better constructed than the 75/15, albeit at a higher price. The 100/15 has an external heat sink and the 75/15 does not. That could be a benefit in a hot environment like the desert. You may want to take a look at it. The next step up is 100/20 which also has an external heat sink like the 100/15. All of these have separate load terminals which is really useful because the controllers have a configurable low voltage disconnect (via the app) and can also track how much power the load is actually using. When you get over 20 amps, for example 100/30 amp controllers and up, they do not have separate load terminals. Update: I measured the current draw of a Blue Solar 100/15 and Smart Solar 100/20. Connected to battery at 12.8v. No PV or load connected, and not connected to app via BT. Blue Solar 100/15: 24 mA. With BT dongle 25.5-26 mA Smart Solar 100/20: 34 mA. With BT dongle 35-36.5 mA I dont have numbers for the 75/15, though its likely not more than above. The point is, the BT 4.x dongle takes only 1 to 1.5 mA. Unless youre using a 15 amp MPPT controller with a battery bank the size of a coin cell battery, the BT dongle is the way to go (IMO).