Victron Energy

Giving users all over the world real-time info about their energy system.

The client

Victron Energy is one of the world’s leading suppliers of equipment to generate, convert, store and monitor electricity. With Victron Energy’s equipment, users world-wide power homes, companies, public buildings, boats, and even entire villages.

The challenge

Since users rely heavily on Victron Energy’s equipment, it’s vital that they have the opportunity to monitor their system. 24/7, with real time data, wherever they are in the world. Victron Energy had such an environment in place, and they approached us to further maintain and improve the environment.

This environment is called VRM - Victron Remote Monitoring. In VRM, users can set up their installation and monitor the status. For instance, when the Victron equipment is used on a boat, users can see the status of the solar panels, inverter, battery, temperature sensors, humidity sensors, etc. If they want, users can set custom alarms when certain values are exceeded.

Most important challenges

• Design the system architecture in such a way that it allows for growth. In number of users, and in terms of data handled
• Give users the ability to remotely monitor and manage their installations, even if they have poor internet connections
• Make it easy for users to add new devices to their existing installations
• Create a solid user experience for all devices (mobile, tablet, desktop)

Our solution

Since we started maintenance, VRM has grown significantly. Currently, there are over 250,000 users with over 225,000 installations. Here’s how we created a stable system that is easy to use, and has multiple added benefits for Victron customers

Data architecture

Data is collected from multiple data points. Most of these are Victron (GX) devices, which are gateways that send data to VRM. Data is stored in a logger, sent to MySQL RDS + InfluxDB, from there to the API, and then sent to VRM.

Give control to the user(s)

Not only collecting the necessary data in a timely fashion is important, but maybe even more important is displaying relevant information on a dashboard. We’ve created multiple default graphs and overviews within the platform. Users can even create their own graphs and widgets so that they can customize their overview and easily view the information they find important.

Analyze data and forecasting

The platform currently stores TBs of data on multiple databases. This data is used together with external sources to create predictions on when to activate and deactivate certain devices within the installation to improve energy savings. This is done by using data such as forecasted solar irradiance, weather conditions and locations of the devices.

Result

A very scalable platform which can easily process TBs of data from devices and users all over the world. Our goal from the start was to build a platform with many features but also keeping in mind that the interface isn’t cluttered nor difficult to understand. With our data science team we can come up with new models, features and suggestions to help the users of VRM even more when it comes to cost reduction, installation efficiency and a better overview of what is actually happening with their system(s).