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Been down a similar rabbit hole recently while wiring up my shepherd's hut build, so this feels timely. I've got a Victron Multiplus-II 3kVA paired with a Fogstar Drift 200Ah, and I started...
Bomber78 in Batteries & BMS 2 months ago
Old washing machines are basically just motors wrapped in false hope, and motors are the arch-nemesis of every inverter ever bolted to a narrowboat wall. Your Multiplus is seeing a massive inrush...
BC_Boats in Inverters & Chargers 2 months ago
@CrispyMechanic — welcome to the forum, good to have someone sharing real-world experience rather than just specs sheets. Curious what killed the cheap unit in the end — thermal failure or just...
Heath Gazer in On a Budget 2 months ago
DebbiePowell76 | 847 posts | ⭐ Trusted Member @SuffolkSolar Yes, worth doing properly! That screw is for chassis/earth bonding, and on a motorhome it's actually particularly important.
Horrible situation and one that still makes me feel queasy reading about it. Lost a Fogstar 100Ah cell a few years back in the motorhome — not through overcharge, but the experience of finding a...
Hey @RelayDream, curious what you were going to say there — post got cut off mate! One thing I'd flag with the IP65 on LiFePO4 is that the absorption phase can sometimes confuse a BMS that's...
Burn Spirit in Batteries & BMS 2 months ago
Really useful to see something like this without the usual "enter your email for results" nonsense that most of the commercial calculator sites pull. I've been piecing together my own...
@ThingamyBob mate the Victron ecosystem is basically a cult and once you're in, your wallet never recovers — speaking from painful van-based experience with a Cerbo GX that I definitely didn't...
Peak Nomad in Marine & Boat 2 months ago
@RetiredChef2 not seen this exact combo but had similar weirdness with my Victron setup after a power blip. Few things worth checking: Static IP — has the Shelly reverted to DHCP and grabbed a...
@MandyGrant snap — I did almost exactly this for my shepherd's hut setup, though on a 12V bank. The key with Fogstar Drift cells is getting the absorption voltage right for each mode.
@LiamFrost70 that DVCC point is a good shout — had me scratching my head for a week on my static caravan setup before someone pointed me at the firmware versions.
Been running a Pi 4 (2GB) connected to my Cerbo GX via VE.Direct for about 18 months now, logging everything to InfluxDB with a Grafana dashboard on top.
@DodgyMechanic raises the exact right question. I spent three weeks chasing a similar ghost last autumn — turned out my BMS was reporting active balancing but the actual cell delta hadn't shifted...
Tor Jake in Q&A 2 months ago
Running a small chest freezer in my van conversion and trying to work out if my battery bank will actually keep it going overnight without solar input. Got a 200Ah lithium (Fogstar Drift 12V)...
Brummie86 in Q&A 2 months ago
Been running a Fogstar Drift 100Ah in my garden office setup for about eight months now and honestly the Victron BMS has handled top balancing pretty well on its own.
The Ducato's had this exact drama play out twice now — once when a dodgy RJ45 decided to go on holiday mid-winter, and the MP II dutifully shut everything down including the diesel heater...
Spent three years learning this lesson the hard way in my Transit conversion, so here's my honest take. Started with a £18 PWM unit from Amazon — can't even remember the brand, some string of...
Crispy Mechanic in On a Budget 2 months ago
Hey @GrumpyWarden, interesting setup! One thing worth looking at is adding additional SmartShunts for each extra bank - they'll all talk to the Cerbo GX over VE.Direct and show up neatly in the...
@ExPostie and @BlownFuse have covered the basics but nobody's mentioned inverter efficiency losses — your 200Ah Fogstar at 12V is ~2.4kWh usable (80% DoD), but shove that through a cheap inverter...
FormerCop in Q&A 2 months ago
Bit of an odd one this, hoping someone here has seen similar. Running a Victron Multi RS Solar on my narrowboat with a Shelly Pro EM for energy monitoring.