Victron Energy Solar Inverters

How the Victron Energy inverter range is organised

Victron sits in a different category from the grid-tied brands on this site, and that is the first thing to understand about its range. These are battery inverters: they take DC from a battery bank and produce AC, for off-grid, marine, vehicle and backup installations. They are not string inverters built to feed a PV array into the grid, so power bands, MPPT counts and grid specs read differently here. Seven Victron models are listed.

Phoenix: the battery inverter core

Four of the seven are Phoenix. Phoenix Inverter 12V 24V 48V 800Va 3KVA is a family entry rather than a single unit, covering three battery voltages and a span of ratings, and it is recorded with a pure sine wave output. Phoenix Inverter Compact and Phoenix Inverter Smart are chassis and feature variants on the same idea, both recorded as sine wave. Phoenix Inverter Vedirect 250Va 800Va covers the small end of the family.

Inverter RS: the 48 V, 6 kW tier

Inverter RS 48 6000 230V Smart is recorded at 6,000 W, 230 V output, 11 kg, high-frequency topology. Inverter RS Smart Solar shares the same 6,000 W and 11 kg, with one addition that shows up directly in the data: an MPPT tracking range of 80-450 V and a 450 V maximum DC input. That is a PV input the plain Inverter RS does not record, because the Smart Solar variant has a solar charger built in.

SUN Inverter

SUN Inverter is stored at 250 W with 230 V sine wave output, the smallest rating on the list.

What is missing. The stored specs are thin: no efficiency figure for any Victron entry, and several entries are family designations rather than single ratings. Victron's combined inverter/charger families, which sit at the centre of most Victron systems, are not represented in this listing at all.

Reading a Victron model designation

Victron codes describe the DC side, the AC rating, and the feature or communication variant.

Phoenix designations pair battery voltage with VA rating. The stored name Phoenix Inverter 12V 24V 48V 800Va 3KVA shows both halves of the pattern at family level: the first figure is the nominal battery input voltage, 12, 24 or 48 V, and the second is the output rating. For a single unit the two are written with a slash between them.

VA, not watts. Phoenix ratings are given in volt-amps, which is apparent power, not the real power in watts the grid-tied brands quote. The two are not interchangeable. This site stores a watt figure only where Victron publishes one, as it does for the 6,000 W Inverter RS units and the 250 W SUN Inverter.

Suffixes are features, not power. Smart marks built-in Bluetooth for setup and monitoring, VE.Direct marks the wired communication port, and Compact marks the smaller chassis. None of them changes the rating.

RS is the newer high-frequency platform. Both RS entries are recorded with a high-frequency topology, 230 V output and 11 kg. Smart Solar on an RS is the meaningful addition: it is the variant with an integrated solar charger, and the data shows it, since the Inverter RS Smart Solar records an 80-450 V MPPT range and a 450 V maximum DC input while the plain Inverter RS records neither. A 230V in the name is the AC output voltage.