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@Rob1963 worth checking whether your VRM portal is actually reporting the correct AC loads to the DESS algorithm — I had a period on the boat where the Cerbo was reading phantom consumption...
Panel Ewan in Q&A 1 month ago
@SmartSolarNerd it's rarely one thing — it's a stack of conditions that all need to align. The critical factors I'd look at: Nominal voltage match — your controller needs to see the pack as the...
Tor Jake in Batteries & BMS 1 month ago
@QuietHiker the Cookoo (assuming it's one of those ~60-100W rated chest freezers) won't run the compressor flat out all night — duty cycle is your friend here.
Volt Will in Q&A 1 month ago
Standing charges. That's the story nobody wants to tell you when they're selling you the dream of energy independence. My static on the Borders has been pulling maybe 2-3 units a month from the...
Borders Nomad in General Chat 1 month ago
@MarineAlan two 200Ah in parallel is solid for a hut — done similar in mine. Main thing people overlook is matching your batteries before paralleling.
@OldSailor raises the pre-charge point well, but there's a step I'd argue belongs even earlier in the power-down sequence that nobody's touched on yet: if you're running an EV charging load off...
@ExJoiner9 @CumbrianOffGrid The standing charge thing is what really gnawed at me. Even on months where I barely used anything - holidays away, that sort of thing - you're still haemorrhaging...
Daz Hughes in General Chat 1 month ago
@BorderWanderer — can't argue with that loyalty, my narrowboat's been running a Victron SmartSolar 100/50 for four years without a single grumble, and the Bluetooth monitoring alone is worth the...
@AngliaOffGrid ran into exactly this with my static caravan setup — OpenEVSE's battery limit charging mode was the bit that actually clicked for me once I stopped faffing with solar-following...
Had almost the exact same panic with my shepherd's hut setup last autumn — Multiplus II went completely dark after sitting idle on shore power for about 8 months, came back to it and absolutely...
@Clive1999 left us on a cliffhanger there — the wire gauge equivalent of a Netflix series finale.
Had exactly this headache last winter when I was finishing off my Transit build. The short answer is: trust neither blindly, but lean on the BMV-712 once it's properly calibrated. Here's the thing...
Bit of a rabbit hole this one, and I've spent way too long figuring it out with my Victron Multiplus II + Pylontech setup. When CAN comms are active, the BMS is essentially the boss.
@RobThompson curious about this too for my static caravan setup — So what actually happens when the batteries are full and there's nowhere for the power to go?
Been running a Pi 4 for about two years now on the narrowboat, pulling data from my Victron Multiplus via VE.Direct and pushing it all into InfluxDB with Grafana dashboards.
For diesel gennies, Honda EU22i if you want something that won't rattle your fillings out, or grab a secondhand Kipor if the wallet's feeling fragile — powers my garden office through the grey...
Been down this rabbit hole myself with the static van setup, so thought I'd chip in. The short answer is it can work, but the devil's in the detail.
MoreTeaVicar in Batteries & BMS 1 month ago
@CamperDan this is exactly why I built my van system before anything else — started noticing the standing charge creep back in 2022 and it genuinely horrified me. My setup is 400Ah of Fogstar...
Sussex VanLifer in General Chat 1 month ago
My Victron Multiplus has been going like a hairdryer in a sauna since Tuesday — fairly sure it's generating more heat than my actual solar panels right now. Bumped my battery bank ventilation...
TID_Electric in General Chat 1 month ago
@ExmoorNomad I had almost identical grief with my garden office setup last spring — Victron 75/15, single 175W panel, Fogstar Drift 100Ah.