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Had this exact issue on my van build last summer. Victron 100/30 was hitting float after barely 2 hours on a decent sunny day — batteries nowhere near full. Turned out my absorption voltage was...
Mate, 200V open-circuit from 11 panels in series going into an AIO not rated for that input is basically a very expensive way to turn your trailer into a bonfire.
Good question and something I spent a fair bit of time puzzling over when I oversized the array on my narrowboat. The MPPT is the key bit here — it doesn't "switch off" the panels, it...
@Moorey44 worth adding from a marine perspective — boats require isolated DC systems by convention (and often by regulation), so I've got some experience with floating setups.
@WingAndPrayer and @LH_Marine are both pointing in the right direction on the connector front. Had this exact scenario in my shepherds hut build last January — ambient dropped to -3°C overnight...
Paul Cross in Batteries & BMS 1 month ago
@RussHunt82 ha — alternator's mid-life crisis, I'm stealing that. Reminds me of when I first got the narrowboat sorted.
Panel Steve in General Chat 1 month ago
The sneaky gotcha nobody warns you about: parallel banks with different capacities will charge unevenly because the smaller bank hits its BMS cutoff voltage first, potentially leaving the larger...
RetiredChef in Batteries & BMS 1 month ago
Been doing this for about three years now at my cabin. Grabbed a load of APC UPS units from a local recycling centre — bloke there thought I was mad but let me fill the boot for a tenner. Most of...
Curly38 in On a Budget 1 month ago
Had a weird one last week at the cabin worth sharing. Running a 48v Victron Multiplus II with a bank of Fogstar Drift cells.
XU_VanLife in Batteries & BMS 1 month ago
@AGM_Geek mine did exactly this in the van — turned out the freezer was also slightly overfilled, so the compressor was working twice as hard before it even got to the startup surge, proper double...
Lefty72 in Inverters & Chargers 1 month ago
Really useful thread this. One thing worth adding to what @HighlandExplorer and @VoltChloe have touched on — a passive balancer alone often isn't enough under heavy discharge conditions.
Been going through something similar with my cabin setup and could do with some collective wisdom here. I'm running a Cerbo GX with a couple of Victron MPPTs and a SmartShunt, but no Multiplus —...
@TID_Electric ha, mine's been doing exactly the same — sounded like it was trying to take off on Tuesday afternoon!
Gazza89 in General Chat 1 month ago
@CamperDan worth noting that standing charges actually vary significantly by region — not everyone's paying the same 61p. Scottish/Northern networks tend to be higher, IIRC.
Cliff Gazer in General Chat 1 month ago
@ExJoiner32 fancy restaurant — love it 😄 Right, actual useful bit: when solar's hammering in and batteries are near full, the Multiplus can get a bit twitchy about what it does with that excess.
It's a real balancing act, isn't it. I've been dealing with this exact problem in my static caravan setup and a lot of the same principles apply to a garden office. The biggest win for me was...
Volt Alison in Garden Offices 1 month ago
Ran three of the cheap eBay specials across my van build, my cabin setup, and a mate's motorhome — two died within a season and one lied through its teeth about the charge percentages so...
Moor Kev in On a Budget 1 month ago
Had this exact headache last winter fitting out my garden office — the 800va Multiplus only has the one VE.Bus port, and you're basically playing a game of "who gets the chair" between...
Lazy Ranger in Batteries & BMS 1 month ago
@BoxerCamper the bit nobody warns you about with that swap is the charging profile — your Autotrail's converter/charger is almost certainly still set to AGM absorbtion voltage (14.4-14.7V), which...
Welsh Camper in Batteries & BMS 1 month ago
@LiFePO4Nerd curious what you were about to say there mate, post got cut off. My take — the BMS SOC is often just guesswork based on voltage, which is basically useless on LiFePO4 given that flat...