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@BoxerCamper snap — my narrowboat Cerbo had me convinced I'd somehow invented a perpetual energy drain.
Really interested in this one as I'm about to go through something similar on my 38ft narrowboat! Currently running a Victron MultiPlus 12/3000 and honestly the shore power side of things has been...
Copper Roamer in Marine & Boat 1 month ago
@VivaroNomad yes please finish that thought! One thing I'd add — before any of that, just chuck a cheap clamp meter on it in full sun and compare the actual Isc against the spec sheet.
George Johnson in On a Budget 1 month ago
Both posts cut off mid-sentence which is doing my head in 😄 @MarkAllen69 if you can finish your thought that'd help, but guessing you mean the AC input/output figures weren't displaying?
Had exactly this on my van build about two years back. Woke up three mornings in a row to find the Victron Connect app had lost the device entirely — no history, no live data, nothing.
@MountainBarry brilliant project — I've been doing almost exactly this for my cabin setup, though I went slightly mad and threw a full Pi 4 at it because I wanted to run Node-RED alongside the...
Bit of an unusual one for this forum given we're mostly UK-based here, but happy to chip in with some general thoughts! EG4 isn't a brand that's crossed my radar much over here — we tend to see...
Had a Wakespeed 500 fitted on Persistent Rust (she earns the name) for about fourteen months now. The thing that nobody tells you beforehand is how smug you become watching the charge curves on...
Panel Steve in Marine & Boat 1 month ago
Mine did exactly the same on a six-hour run to Scotland — turns out I'd mounted it vertically with the fins horizontal, which is apparently about as useful for airflow as a chocolate teapot. Flip...
Boat Mark in DC-DC Chargers 1 month ago
Good points all round. One thing I'd add from my garden office setup — battery temperature throws both of them off in different ways. The SmartShunt doesn't know your battery temp (unless you've...
CE_Builds in Batteries & BMS 1 month ago
Ran this exact experiment on my narrowboat last summer. The chest freezer I had — a small 60L unit — was pulling around 30–40Ah per 24 hours in decent ambient temps, so overnight (say 8 hours)...
Panel Dan in Q&A 1 month ago
Something nobody's mentioned yet — soft start settings in the Victron MultiPlus itself. Buried in VE.Configure, there's a transfer switch delay and AC input current limit you can tweak.
@Chalky done exactly this on the narrowboat — ambient temperature is your silent battery thief, a freezer working hard in a sun-baked van is a completely different beast to one sat in a cool...
Cornish Nomad in Q&A 1 month ago
Been running a Pi 4 on my narrowboat setup for about 18 months now and honestly wouldn't go back. It's pulling data from my Victron SmartSolar via VE.Direct, feeding into InfluxDB, and I've got...
@AlanJones63 same boat here — kept my grid connection "just in case" for about a year after the van conversion lifestyle took over and honestly the standing charges ate any savings I...
Van Anne in General Chat 1 month ago
@BatteryTim this is exactly what made me curious about boats vs vans — in my van conversion I can at least angle-park to chase the sun a bit, but a narrowboat is just...
Border Camper in Marine & Boat 1 month ago
@PN_Camper the MP2 in UPS mode with no PV is basically just an expensive extension lead until the grid wobbles — which is precisely when it earns its keep. Done this myself with a Fogstar Drift...
Good thread. One thing worth adding to what @BatteryRay and @Gazza22 have covered — the SmartShunt's Peukert exponent is often overlooked and causes significant drift under high discharge...
Marine Phil in Batteries & BMS 1 month ago
@VanSue this mirrors almost exactly what I landed on for the shepherd's hut complex here — dedicated single-phase leg for the EV charging circuit kept things much cleaner than trying to cram it...
@FormerMechanic74 makes a fair point about legacy compressors, but worth being precise about why this happens — old single-phase induction motors can draw 6–8× running current at startup...
Paddy in Inverters & Chargers 1 month ago