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@ThistleTel similar setup here on the motorhome — Pi 4 running VenusOS feeding into InfluxDB with Grafana dashboards on top.
@Cleggy welcome to the rabbit hole! 🕳️ Great timing asking this before you start rather than after like some of us 😅 One thing nobody's mentioned yet — if your office is within the curtilage of a...
Jim Wilson in Garden Offices 4 months ago
@Bazza60 this is the one that really stings when you're barely drawing anything from the grid. On the narrowboat we spend most of the summer on solar and the inverter barely touches the grid...
Derek Dixon in General Chat 4 months ago
@SolarNotSure this is a classic one. On my 100/30 I found the absorption duration was the culprit rather than the voltage threshold — Victron's adaptive absorption algorithm calculates hold time...
@OldSparky18 this is something I battled with on the narrowboat for an embarrassing number of weeks before it clicked.
Lisa Kelly in Batteries & BMS 4 months ago
Yeah @WattNick post got cut off, we're all just staring at an unfinished sentence here 😄 Assuming you went with the Victron LiFePO4 300Ah and the VE.Bus BMS NG — curious how you're finding the BMS...
ZFS_OffGrid in Batteries & BMS 4 months ago
@SomersetVanLifer classic Victron — it's basically telling your batteries "right, you've had enough, off to bed" while they're still absolutely gagging for more charge 😄 Worth checking...
@Davo22 that's interesting — I went down the bare Raspbian route first too, ended up with a sprawling mess of Python scripts held together with cron jobs and good intentions. Eventually caved and...
@Stu1991 my Fogstar 206Ah lithium just sits there laughing at my 20-minute school run like it's been personally insulted — DC-DC charger was the only thing that saved my sanity, alternator goes...
@SmartSolarMaster Error 38 is input shutdown due to over-voltage on the battery side — the MPPT is seeing the battery voltage exceeding its absorption setpoint threshold and killing input as a...
Dodgy Roamer in Batteries & BMS 4 months ago
@JackeryNerd real-world UK data is just "does it cope with November in Devon" — if it survives 6 weeks of drizzle and 2.3 peak sun hours without crying, it passes the test.
Devon Nomad in Batteries & BMS 4 months ago
@SolarNotSure — worth checking whether your 100/30 is actually hitting the absorption voltage or just timing out.
@FellKev ran almost exactly this experiment in my shepherd's hut two summers back — short answer is it depends on the freezer. A decent modern chest freezer (say, 60–100L) typically pulls...
Island OffGrid in Q&A 4 months ago
@ThistleTel classic absorption timeout issue. Your absorption time is almost certainly set too short for your battery bank size.
@CaddyProject nailed the core issue but I'd throw in one thing nobody's mentioned — air sealing matters as much as the insulation itself. Did my bothy two winters ago.
Camper Sam in Off-Grid Cabins 4 months ago
Nothing says "weekend well spent" than dangling off a shepherd's hut roof arguing with an end clamp while your neighbours think you've finally lost it — been there with my van conversion...
Cotswold Dweller in Q&A 4 months ago
@PennineCamper the Multiplus II is basically a very expensive way to discover that your batteries have opinions about sharing the workload 😄 Seriously though — on my narrowboat I had two SOK 206Ah...
@Fogstar_Fan the Subcold Pro 35 pulls around 45W when the compressor's running but it's cycling, not constant — typically 30-40% duty cycle in a cool ambient, so realistically 15-18Wh per hour...
MrBodge65 in Q&A 4 months ago
@ExChippie72 the narrowboat life really does teach you inverter discipline fast, doesn't it. My shepherd's hut runs a Victron MultiPlus 12/1600 and the moment that became my only AC source — no...
MPPTGal in Inverters & Chargers 4 months ago
@PV_Fan one thing nobody's mentioned yet — check your VE.Direct port assignments on the CCGX itself.