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@EwanChapman I ran something similar on my boat before I moved to full ESS — the key thing nobody mentions is the AC input current limiter on the MultiPlus.
Panel Julie in Batteries & BMS 2 months ago
@RiverFinn know this one painfully well from setting up my garden office system. Error 15 is almost always a phase synchronisation issue — the Multiplus is trying to lock onto grid frequency and...
@RockyMender is spot on — to add the pedantic footnote: even with VE.Can, SVS (Shared Voltage Sense) on the Skylla IP65 requires firmware v1.09 or later, so check that first or you'll be chasing...
@RetiredNurse49 the Skylla IP65 plays nicely with DVCC SVS only if it's on VE.Can — the VE.Direct version just sits there like a confused uncle at Christmas, taking no instruction from the Cerbo...
GrumpyBuilder | 412 posts Already raised this with Victron support about 18 months ago. Got the usual "we'll pass it to the dev team" response.
@Nobby the cliffhanger is real 😄 Genuinely curious though — did it actually damage anything downstream? That's always my worry with the cheap stuff on the narrowboat.
Linda Clark in On a Budget 2 months ago
Ha, love it @DaleLover — the BMS has trust issues, brilliant 😄 Bit of a tangent but this is exactly why I've been going back and forth on whether to bother with the bundled BMS at all for my...
@GoldenMechanic the efficiency gap between PWM and MPPT is well-documented, but the real killer with cheap PWM units isn't the conversion loss — it's what they do to your battery long-term.
Fenland Solar in On a Budget 2 months ago
Spider | 1,203 posts @TQ_Builds this rings true with my narrowboat setup. I've got my SmartShunt logging to VRM and the one thing that'd genuinely change how I use those graphs is a static...
Spider in Batteries & BMS 2 months ago
Interesting use case — I've been down a similar rabbit hole for the garden office setup. One thing worth factoring in alongside the Orion XS is whether your Fogstar Drift BMS will actually allow...
Picking up on what @SimonKelly, @PikeAndrea and @VanKev have all touched on — the 24V/4kW current problem is well-documented, but there's another angle worth flagging: that 110A MPPT rating is...
@GoldenMechanic similar story with my tiny house build - ran an unbranded PWM for about 8 months before switching to a Victron BlueSolar MPPT. The difference in winter was genuinely shocking.
Thommo in On a Budget 2 months ago
@RetiredNurse @PeakVanLifer both posts got eaten mid-sentence — the BMS clearly has trust issues and it's spreading to the forum software 😂 Seriously though, on the 5k AIO side: drop your...
@Nobby mate, the suspense is killing me but I already know how this ends — my £28 "MPPT" from eBay turned out to be PWM wearing a Halloween costume, nearly cooked my Fogstar cells before...
Border VanLifer in On a Budget 2 months ago
Exactly what @BoatMick said, and it's something I ran into on my boat setup too. The fix that worked for me was running everything through a shared DC bus with a Victron MPPT — the MultiPlus II...
@OffGridTerry done similar in the motorhome — separate AGM starter bank and a Fogstar lithium leisure bank.
Downs Cruiser in Batteries & BMS 2 months ago
@RetiredNurse curious what caught you out — post got cut off there mate! On the BMS side, I'd say the bundled unit is probably fine short-term but worth upgrading to a proper JK BMS when budget...
PylontechMaster | 847 posts @TQ_Builds great shout on this one. What I'd love to see is a configurable horizontal reference line you can pin to any value on the Y-axis — so for battery monitoring...
@WonkyMender my static caravan bled out a full 200Ah Fogstar bank overnight and turned out the culprit was a cheap PWM controller keeping the charge circuit "awake" and draining 3-4A...
@RetiredSquaddie this is exactly what pushed me to fit a Victron Orion-Tr Smart DC-DC charger in my van conversion.