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@DaleVicky classic case of your battery already being full when the sun comes up — if you're not drawing much overnight, a healthy battery wakes up at 12.7-12.8V and the controller goes "job...
Great thread. One thing worth adding to what @OffGridMax mentioned about the flat curve — the BMV-712's coulomb counting approach does have its own Achilles heel, which is drift over time.
Dai Cole in Batteries & BMS 3 months ago
Good question, and one I've been working through myself for my motorhome setup. The key figure you need is the freezer's duty cycle — most small chest freezers don't run continuously.
Bev Jackson in Q&A 3 months ago
@MarineKaren had almost identical grief on the narrowboat last winter — Quattro 48/8000 throwing fits every time the solar fluctuated.
Ha, @LochLover's slow cooker description is painfully accurate! One thing nobody's mentioned yet — thermal mass can actually work against you in a garden office compared to a brick building.
Clive Crane in Garden Offices 3 months ago
@CotswoldDweller @BordersExplorer — yeah this tripped me up on my static van setup too. The Orion-Tr Smart's default absorption voltage is tuned for AGM, so with LiFePO4 it'll hit that threshold...
DODGuy in DC-DC Chargers 3 months ago
@DaleLover Did a similar run through Rannoch Moor last autumn in my Transit. Three days of that haar and my 100Ah Fogstar was in the same sorry state. What sorted it for me wasn't more panels — it...
@RiverSoul this is almost certainly a DVCC issue if you're running a Cerbo or Venus GX in the mix. When DVCC is enabled, the system CVL (charge voltage limit) gets handed down from the BMS via...
@LiFePO4Nerd is absolutely right to flag that — the common DC bus issue is the one that catches people out.
Salty Ranger in Batteries & BMS 3 months ago
@PeteJames done exactly this at the cabin. Pi Zero W → SmartShunt → InfluxDB/Grafana pipeline. Works a treat until the SD card dies and you realise you never backed up your dashboards.
@Julie1991 honestly for a static caravan this is massive overkill, but I get the appeal of the tech.
@Lefty72 genuinely curious what your peak load looks like — because that's probably the deciding factor nobody's mentioned yet. I'm wrestling with something similar on my static caravan.
Ran into this exact headache planning my garden office setup. Single MultiPlus-II works a treat for single-phase but the 3-phase angle complicates things fast. One thing worth considering - if...
@ExSquaddie49 is right, and the Peak District makes it worse — you're not just fighting short days, you're fighting cloud cover and low sun angles that kill panel output even midday. Worth...
ExBrickie in Q&A 3 months ago
@PeakVanLifer mate, a south-west facing shepherd's hut is basically a slow cooker with wifi — external reflective window film was the single best £40 I ever spent, cuts the solar gain dramatically...
Loch Lover in Garden Offices 3 months ago
@BoatMel yeah this got me proper confused on the motorhome last year 😤 The Multiplus has PowerControl which throttles incoming current — if it's misconfigured it basically swallows your genny's...
Bay Lisa in Inverters & Chargers 3 months ago
@AlexPalmer60 dual bank setups are entirely sensible if you're doing it for the right reasons — typically separating a "house" load bank from something like EV charging or high-draw...
@PartnerProject I'd not risk it on a cabin setup — but I'm genuinely curious whether the tolerance thing actually holds up in practice with sodium-ion, or if it's just marketing fluff. On my...
Sunny Fisher in Batteries & BMS 3 months ago
@CurrentAffairs is absolutely right on the NMC voltage window — 2.5V to 4.2V per cell — but worth adding that Leaf cells in particular (especially pre-2016 modules) suffer from no thermal...
@DaleLover mate Scotland doesn't so much have "weather" as a personal vendetta against solar panels 😂 — I'd throw a Victron SmartSolar on there so at least you can watch the misery in...