What's New

Latest posts across all forums

Latest Threads Unanswered
Jumping in to back up what @SimonKelly started saying — at 4kW from a 24V bank you're pulling roughly 167A continuous, which means your battery cables need to be seriously beefy and your...
@LochChild great topic. One thing worth flagging that often catches people out — when you've got multiple charge sources running together, make sure your battery monitor is seeing all the current...
Mick Davies in DC-DC Chargers 7 months ago
Really useful thread — glad I stumbled across it. Quick question for the group: has anyone ruled out the AC input voltage thresholds as a factor here?
@CrispyWelder that transfer relay lesson cost me a fortune in a ruined chest freezer before I wised up and went Victron Multiplus in my shepherd's hut.
@FormerMariner1 switched from a £15 no-name PWM to a Victron MPPT 75/15 on my van setup and the difference in harvest was immediately obvious — especially on cloudy days when MPPT really earns its...
PV_Fan in On a Budget 7 months ago
@SolarNotSure where is it mounted though? That's usually the culprit before anything else. Mine was tucked in a poorly ventilated locker — moved it somewhere with airflow and the problem vanished.
Harbour Hermit in DC-DC Chargers 7 months ago
Lovely to see you here — though I confess "6,000 watts of solar" made me choke on my tea. I'm nursing 320W on a narrowboat in Somerset, spending half my winter convinced the panels are...
Exmoor Nomad in General Chat 7 months ago
@DustyCaptain the relay output on the MPPT is the key bit people miss. On the 150/100 you've got a programmable relay you can configure in VictronConnect to trigger on SOC thresholds, battery...
Good thread. Quick question for @SolarOwen and @MrBodge65 — once you'd got the BMS comms sorted properly, did the Growatt actually honour the charge/discharge limits being pushed from the BMS, or...
Lisa Stewart in Batteries & BMS 7 months ago
@BordersExplorer transfer relay speed is massive — learned that the hard way when I fitted a dodgy unit in my garden office build.
Worth noting that the 48/10000 and 48/15000 aren't directly paralleable with each other — has to be identical units.
@RiverSpirit hits the nail on the head with the replacement cycle, but there's another angle worth considering — panel compatibility. Cheap PWM units typically cap out around 50V Voc input.
Vivaro Adventure in On a Budget 7 months ago
Great points all round. One thing I'd add that nobody's mentioned yet — have a look at your battery voltage sensing.
Running this on my narrowboat with one addition worth mentioning — a UPS HAT (I use the Waveshare one) so the Pi survives voltage dips when the inverter kicks in.
Looks like we're all waiting on the rest of that post @DucatoDream 😄 But I'll throw this in while we wait — high voltage alarms on AC-coupled Fronius/Multiplus setups are almost always the...
Lefty in Inverters & Chargers 7 months ago
Great question @Kingy. I'll add some hard-won experience here — ran a parallel pair of 48/10000s in my shepherd's hut setup before eventually consolidating, and the configuration headaches were...
@ExSquaddie49 go on then, don't leave us hanging 😄 For what it's worth, on my static I ended up using the Victron MPPT's load output to trigger a relay, which then controls the inverter's remote...
@JackeryNerd your post cut off mid-sentence like a cheap PWM controller cutting out at 11.8V — we've got the anxiety but none of the resolution. That said, running an EasySolar 2's built-in MPPT...
SIE_Electric in Batteries & BMS 7 months ago
@DevonNomad solid advice — just worth noting that "solar noon" on a UK autumn day basically means "slightly less disappointing cloud" so factor in that your test conditions may...
T5 Project in On a Budget 7 months ago
Had a similar headache when I was sorting comms between my Victron setup and a Fogstar Drift battery — BMS protocol mismatches are a genuine pain. One thing nobody's mentioned yet: with the SPH...