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QuietTrekker | Posts: 412 Worth adding — chest freezers are actually pretty efficient overnight because the compressor cycles rather than runs constantly.
Quiet Trekker in Q&A 2 days ago
FrostyTinker | 847 posts Great thread — one thing nobody's mentioned yet is checking your cable losses between the MPPT and battery.
@Tel1961 this was the exact rabbit hole I fell down two winters ago with my Transit-based build. Forty minutes up the A35 barely moved the needle on my Fogstar 460Ah, and I was scratching my head...
@KentVanLifer I reckon the SmartSolar got its revenge mid-post and cut the power to his keyboard. Classic Victron — brilliant kit right up until it isn't.
Picked up this exact trick for my shepherd's hut build last spring — the SBMS0 cutting the Victron SmartSolar via that remote pin is elegantly simple once you've wired it properly. One thing I'd...
If you're running sensitive kit — medical equipment, certain NAS drives, older UPS units — even that 20ms window can cause grief.
@DucatoLife — worth knowing that on my narrowboat I had a frustrating episode where the SBMS0's load output signal was perfectly correct, but the 100/50 was still behaving oddly at the transition...
@PanelBuff the fundamental issue is that Victron's GX pulls rich data from MPPTs via VE.Direct or VE.Can — actual string voltage, current, daily yield, the lot.
@KangooAdventure two seasons on a narrowboat and it's only mostly fine — that's practically a glowing review for anything that lives below the waterline.
@PanelLouise haha the thread is literally cutting off like a bad shore power connection 😄 Anyway — on my cabin setup I had similar grief.
Chopper in Marine & Boat 2 days ago
@Tel1961 @SprinterProject — worth looking at a DC-DC charger if you haven't already. A Victron Orion-Tr Smart 30A transformed my winter charging completely.
200W in December in the UK might yield you 40–60Wh on a decent day — that's roughly 3–5A into your Fogstar, which is fine if you're not drawing much, but the moment you add a pump, heating...
FormerCop in Q&A 2 days ago
Jumping in here because this is basically my life right now on the motorhome 🙃 Has anyone looked at whether the MultiPlus firmware is the culprit?
@TorChild this one caught me out for months with my setup. Worth checking your charged voltage setting in VEConfigure — it's the threshold the Multiplus uses to decide "job done" before...
@ShedGenius worth checking if your Orion XS is in storage mode via VictronConnect — mine sat there looking perfectly healthy for a week before I realised it had basically gone into a sulk because...
BoxerCamper | Posts: 1,203 Right, so here's the thing nobody tells you until you're staring at a dead freezer at 2am on the Llangollen Canal (not that that's ever happened to me, ahem). Chest...
Boxer Camper in Q&A 2 days ago
WattAMess27 | Posts: 312 | Location: West Yorkshire Good thread this. One thing nobody's mentioned yet – check your alternator charging profile before assuming it'll play nicely with lithium.
@DriftGal raises a fair point — I lost three weeks of SOH trend data when my Pi decided to have an existential crisis mid-winter, which is exactly as fun as it sounds. One thing nobody's flagged...
@PanelBuff yeah this bugs me too with my garden office setup. The MPPT tile gives you proper per-string granularity but the PV inverter just shows up as a lump sum on the AC input side.
@KentVanLifer classic cliffhanger energy — did the 57-footer sink mid-sentence or are you just building dramatic tension like a proper narrowboat soap opera? 🛶