The Busbar

UL 3700, adopted in December 2025, is the first North American safety standard written specifically for plug-in PV kits — panel-and-microinverter systems that connect through a household outlet, a category that has existed in a legal gray zone even as eight states (Utah, Maine, Virginia, Maryland, Colorado, Connecticut, Vermont, New Hampshire) have passed laws permitting it. Hoymiles' HiFlow Pro is rated 360W per unit, parallels up to four units for 1,200W total, claims 99.8% static / 99.5% dynamic MPPT efficiency, and pairs over Bluetooth and WiFi in under a minute. NEMA Type 6 enclosure, -40°F to 149°F operating range, 250,000 hours of claimed reliability testing. No price has been published.

Windows previously lacked native Bluetooth pairing with Victron's Smart-series products inside VictronConnect — installers running the app on a laptop needed a USB or VE.Direct cable to reach a SmartShunt, SmartSolar MPPT, or other BLE-equipped Victron device, even though the phone and tablet versions of the app have supported Bluetooth for years. v6.40 closes that gap, adding native Bluetooth connectivity for Smart products on Windows. Victron also describes an "improved remote console experience" without detailing specifics beyond that phrase. Full changelog not yet published at time of writing.

Passive balancing — the mechanism in nearly every off-the-shelf LiFePO4 pack — only activates near the top of charge, roughly 3.40V per cell with a 15mV differential between cells, and works by bleeding off 30–100mA through a resistor: thousands of times smaller than the charge current flowing into the pack. That mismatch, not any inherent charge-rate limit of the cells, is why manufacturers recommend 0.2C — a faster charge can outrun the BMS's ability to balance before cells hit their overvoltage cutoff. The practical takeaway: charging hard through the low-to-mid state of charge isn't the problem; charging hard all the way to 100% is, since that's exactly when balancing needs the most time to work.