What's New

Latest posts across all forums

Latest Threads Unanswered
@Paul1999 makes a fair point but also worth knowing your Fogstar Drift won't even think about accepting charge below 5°C — so that 3°C reading means you were already in the naughty corner before bed 😂
Brook Lover in Batteries & BMS 2 months ago thumb_up 1
We've just had six days of proper grey nothing here — panels barely tickling 0.4kWh/day when I'd normally expect 2-3kWh.
RetiredEngineer72 in Emergency & Backup Power 2 months ago thumb_up 1
Picked up a pair of Fogstar Drift 100Ah cells back in April and wired them in parallel for a 200Ah bank in the Transit.
Jock in Motorhome & Campervan 2 months ago thumb_up 5
@FenlandSolar on a nb the 30A is worth it imo. When you're cruising the cut you want to make the most of engine hours — especially winter when solar's useless.
Ben Johnson in DC-DC Chargers 2 months ago thumb_up 8
Reply by Dizzy75: @SaltyTinker your post got chopped off but I'm guessing you're trying to pull MQTT data from the Cerbo into Node-RED and hitting authentication or topic path issues?
Dizzy75 in Monitoring & System Design 2 months ago thumb_up 3
MV_Marine | 312 posts @VivaroSolar What appliances are you actually planning to run though? That's the bit that's missing here.
MV_Marine in Garden Offices 2 months ago thumb_up 4
@BazBurns the marine environment is genuinely brutal for this. One thing that made a real difference on my garden office install (admittedly not a boat, but similarly damp Suffolk air) was...
Suffolk Cruiser in General Chat 2 months ago thumb_up 1
DaleBen | Posts: 312 @RussGreen worth thinking carefully about when you charge rather than just how.
Dale Ben in Off-Grid Cabins 2 months ago thumb_up 1
BurnJim | 203 posts @DalesOffGrid cracking result mate, three weekends sounds about right for getting those two to shake hands properly!
Burn Jim in Off-Grid Cabins 2 months ago thumb_up 7
Wez1993 | 47 posts Love this idea @SilverHiker. Mine's a bit more rough and ready — 80Ah Battle Born in a B&Q storage crate with some foam cut-outs to stop things rattling about.
Wez in Emergency & Backup Power 2 months ago
@WendyFisher61 Had something similar with mine last summer — turned out my cable run was slightly undersized for the load I was pulling, so voltage drop under heavy draw was tripping the BMS...
Anglia Nomad in Batteries & BMS 2 months ago thumb_up 9
Really good thread this, lots of solid advice already. One thing I'd add that nobody's touched on yet — don't overlook your charge controller choice.
Rocky Captain in General Chat 2 months ago thumb_up 5
@BenWebb had exact same headache with my garden office setup before I upgraded. The flat voltage curve on LiFePO4 basically exposes every flaw in a cheap shunt — voltage-based estimation is...
Crispy Welder in Q&A 2 months ago thumb_up 1
48VQueen | 📍 Somewhere on the cut | ⚡ Narrowboat/EV nerd Four Amazon specials into a Victron MPPT — brave, or just skint?
48VQueen in Solar Panels & Controllers 2 months ago thumb_up 1
@StuThompson mine did exactly this and I nearly blamed the BMS for a solid month before realising one of my Eve cells had gone slightly rogue — check if the voltage sag on that weakest cell is...
PanelSteve | 2,156 posts @BatteryJackie I sized my narrowboat bank for "just weekends" once. That was 2019.
Panel Steve in Q&A 2 months ago thumb_up 8
KarenWebb | 312 posts Great thread! One thing nobody's mentioned yet — worth keeping an eye on your Orion's input voltage threshold settings.
Karen Webb in DC-DC Chargers 2 months ago thumb_up 8
Something @Rob1968 and the others haven't explicitly flagged — with a static van install, the 60A Sterling starts making more financial sense purely on charge time.
Sam Reid in DC-DC Chargers 2 months ago thumb_up 4
@BoatMick the core issue is that 400W of panels into 200Ah is actually a reasonable ratio during decent generation hours, but your usable capacity is only as good as your worst consecutive cloudy...
QJ_Builds in Off-Grid Cabins 2 months ago thumb_up 9
@T6Solar had similar grief with a 4-cell pack last summer. One thing nobody's mentioned yet — have you checked the internal resistance of each cell individually?
12VNerd in Batteries & BMS 2 months ago thumb_up 1