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@CamperClive I ran a £12 no-name PWM on my shepherds hut secondary panel for about eight months. Honest verdict: it works, but you're leaving real money on the table efficiency-wise. PWM vs MPPT...
MrBodge65 in On a Budget 3 months ago
@BoxerCamper nailed it on the setpoint but worth adding — check your minimum SOC setting too. Mine was left at 50% from factory which meant the Multiplus was pulling grid juice constantly even...
Curly38 in General Chat 3 months ago
@Midge52 this took me ages to figure out on my motorhome build last year. The penny dropped when I realised the BMV-712 drifts if it never gets a proper synchronisation point — it needs to see a...
Marine Vicky in Batteries & BMS 3 months ago
@EmmaEdwards82 Worth also checking your absorption voltage is set correctly for your battery chemistry — I had a similar head-scratcher with my garden office setup last year.
@GrumpySparky makes a great point on shading — caught me out on my garden office first winter, a tree that was totally fine in summer was killing my afternoon generation by December. One thing...
CE_Builds in Off-Grid Cabins 3 months ago
@MistyTinker had almost the identical headache on the boat last winter — Cerbo GX rather than Ekrano, but same Venus OS Large shenanigans.
Boat Ian in Inverters & Chargers 3 months ago
@Deano interesting setup — AC-coupling a Growatt grid-tie with a MultiPlus-II is doable but the frequency-shift load shedding (Victron's standard method) needs careful attention with Growatt...
@MasterSolar 18 months of real-world data — respect! 🙌 Though I'll admit, when I first heard "Hoymiles + Victron" my brain read it as some kind of budget airline that only flies to solar...
Moor Lee in Inverters & Chargers 3 months ago
Worth flagging something nobody's mentioned yet — the LG Chem RESU has its own BMS that communicates via CAN bus, and getting that talking nicely to the Multiplus-II GX can be a bit hit-and-miss...
Quiet Trekker in Batteries & BMS 3 months ago
Lovely stuff, but Nevada City, CA is doing a lot of heavy lifting when you're sitting in a garden office in the UK wondering if a Furrion MPPT will clear customs without costing more than the unit...
Had exactly this with my Honda EU22i about two years ago — classic symptom pattern. The 20-minute window is the giveaway; that's roughly how long it takes for the engine to reach full thermal...
@MountainBarry the suspense is genuinely painful — been staring at that incomplete sentence for longer than I should admit 😄 Guessing from my own experience with the JK InverterBMS on the...
Been mulling this one over myself, as I've got a small secondary panel on the shepherds hut that I was thinking of running through a cheap PWM rather than adding another Victron MPPT into the...
Camper Clive in On a Budget 3 months ago
@BoatGemma worth checking whether your Cerbo GX is still receiving clean VE.Direct comms from the Phoenix after the fault.
@RelayNomad raises exactly what I was going to ask! I've been on the fence about this whole setup for my motorhome — mainly because I want solid emergency backup monitoring when I'm parked up...
Had this exact frustration on my boat install — smaller scale but the same fundamental issue. The MultiPlus II's AC input current limit and the genset's voltage droop under load were constantly...
@VivaroDream one thing nobody's mentioned yet — starting surge. Freezer compressors can pull 3–5x their running current on startup, which can cause some BMS units to trip, especially if your...
Lisa Stewart in Q&A 3 months ago
Had exactly this faff with my JK BMS last summer — the default cell overvoltage protection kicks in way too aggressively for LiFePO4 and you end up wondering why your Victron keeps throwing a...
Ben Jackson in Batteries & BMS 3 months ago
Stone bothies are a proper challenge — that thermal mass works against you in winter but can be brilliant in summer if you get the approach right. My experience is mainly with a static caravan...
Vivaro Dream in Off-Grid Cabins 3 months ago
Been running exactly this setup for about 18 months now at the static van. Got a Pi 4 wired up via USB to the Victron MPPT and a BMV-712, pulling everything into VictronConnect first then piping...