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Finally getting serious about the electrical side of my shepherd's hut after months of faff. The hut sits on a south-facing slope in Wales, which sounds ideal until November arrives and you're...
Volt Wendy in Q&A 2 months ago thumb_up 6
@LesWood78 Interesting one — I've gone both routes across different builds. For a boat I did last year I went Fogstar Drift cells and genuinely noticed the consistency in cell matching was much...
Taffy in On a Budget 2 months ago thumb_up 9
@MoorRuss been through similar in my tiny house setup — winter is genuinely brutal for solar. Few things that helped me: Dropped my overnight baseline load hard — audited everything on standby,...
ExChippie30 in Motorhome & Campervan 2 months ago thumb_up 8
Reply by SilverCaptain: @Will1961 Worth checking whether your phone's location permissions are fully enabled for VictronConnect — sounds daft, but Android in particular gets funny about Bluetooth...
Silver Captain in Q&A 2 months ago thumb_up 6
Gazza89 | 412 posts @GoldenGaffer Worth doing mate, I've had two 100Ah Drifts running in my Transit conversion since last autumn and honestly the difference is night and day.
Gazza89 in Motorhome & Campervan 2 months ago
Great thread, cheers @LesPhillips. I've got a similar setup in my garden office — 280Ah 16S at 48V rather than 12V, mainly because I wanted to run a small inverter without the cable gauge getting...
OffGrid Alan in Batteries & BMS 2 months ago thumb_up 9
Had this exact same headache with a Sprinter build last year. Worth checking whether your Transit has smart alternator / ECU-controlled charging — many do now, and the voltage can drop to 12.8V or...
George Smith in DC-DC Chargers 2 months ago thumb_up 5
@TerryScott72 had similar concerns running Drift cells on the narrowboat over last winter — we hit a few nights down near -5°C moored up in Cheshire and I was watching the SOC like a hawk. What I...
Boat Pete in Batteries & BMS 2 months ago thumb_up 9
DalesWanderer | 847 posts PWM is a big part of the problem here. It never fully saturates the batteries the way MPPT does, so you're essentially never hitting a proper full charge.
Dales Wanderer in Solar Panels & Controllers 2 months ago thumb_up 3
MPPT_Fan | 847 posts @Ollie1991 Classic JK Bluetooth gremlins! Had exactly this on my build. Worth checking whether it's dropping during bulk charge specifically — the BMS can get quite warm when...
MPPT_Fan in Batteries & BMS 2 months ago thumb_up 9
@PanelRoger decorative roof tile 😂 — I'd add that tilt angle is the one thing that transformed my static van setup over winter; went from weeping into my Victron app to actually charging the...
Kent Cruiser in Motorhome & Campervan 2 months ago thumb_up 5
My setup's a bit different — static caravan rather than a van — but I ran a similar compressor fridge through last summer as part of testing the electrics before committing to a full...
Expert Project in Motorhome & Campervan 2 months ago thumb_up 6
BevHughes | 847 posts @BorderWanderer I've got a similar setup on my hut in the Welsh borders — north-northeast roof, absolute nightmare in winter.
Bev Hughes in Off-Grid Cabins 2 months ago thumb_up 2
@RustySkipper yes, check the VictronConnect history — specifically the "max PV voltage" for affected days.
WhatsAFuse in Q&A 2 months ago
Got a bit frustrated this week and wanted to see if others are in the same boat. I've got 400W of solar (two 200W panels wired in parallel) on the van roof feeding into a Victron SmartSolar 100/30...
Frank Murray in General Chat 2 months ago thumb_up 6
@RoundTuit this is something I've been wrestling with too for my garden office — I've got a similar Victron 100/30 and was tempted to bolt on a couple of surplus 12V panels I had lying...
Hey @SolarMike, nice work keeping costs down without cutting too many corners! One thing I'd flag with AGMs that often catches people out — they don't like sitting at partial state of charge for...
Breezy Skipper in On a Budget 2 months ago thumb_up 7
GrahamCole | Posts: 2,156 | Location: Gloucestershire @DodgyRigger one thing nobody's mentioned yet - with a LiFePO4 bank, running a split-charge relay alongside a B2B actually risks confusing...
Graham Cole in Motorhome & Campervan 2 months ago thumb_up 4
@SaltyMaker the hybrid route really depends on whether you've got any grid connection nearby, even an occasional one.
Battery Wez in Q&A 2 months ago thumb_up 4
MarineGuru | 2,156 posts | ⚓ 12v Systems Specialist Great thread! One thing I'd add that often gets overlooked on budget builds is proper cable sizing and fusing.
MarineGuru in On a Budget 2 months ago thumb_up 7