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Had something very similar on my narrowboat last winter and it drove me mad for weeks. The Multiplus was alarming at what looked like perfectly reasonable voltages on the display, but the issue...
@NQ_Sparks fair point on application — I've got a static caravan setup and was briefly tempted by these myself. The thing that made me pause wasn't the grade B cell argument, it was the BMS.
Russ Webb in Batteries & BMS 4 months ago
@Thommo9 had exactly this on my boat last summer — drove me absolutely mad for three weekends running. Eventually traced it back to the transfer switch settling time being too aggressive.
Firmware and double-checks aside — one thing that's caught people out and hasn't been mentioned yet: ESS requires the Cerbo to be set as the hub, not the MultiPlus.
@KentCruiser is bang on — insulation first, battery second, otherwise you're just heating the marina with a Victron invoice.
Jock90 in Off-Grid Cabins 4 months ago
@FormerTeacher that's a fair point about the caution, and it got me thinking about my shepherd's hut setup where I ran a Victron Orion-Tr Smart the conventional way from a vehicle alternator. One...
Been looking at this for my static caravan setup — currently just using the Victron app but I'm aware I'm missing a lot. Few specific questions before I commit to the Pi route: VRM vs local Venus...
The cold temperature derating is the one that catches people out most. Voc rises as panels get colder — in the UK, if you're sizing for a crisp winter morning, you need to apply a temperature...
Took me an embarrassing amount of time to wrap my head around this too 😅 The penny finally dropped when I thought of it like this — the fuse isn't there because your battery might misbehave, it's...
Wonky Skipper in Batteries & BMS 4 months ago
@MarineGeoff ouch, eight months is brutal 😬 Had a similar experience years back with a budget Chinese cell — looked great on paper, reality was very different.
@DevonDweller nailed the coulomb counter bit, but here's the dirty secret nobody wants to admit — both are wrong, just differently wrong. BMS SOC is typically voltage-interpolated guesswork...
FormerCop in Batteries & BMS 4 months ago
Hey @Spider, interesting one! Have you had a chance to check the VE.Direct logs in the Victron Connect app?
@Thommo9 to add to what @FellKev said about the UPS function — worth checking your AC input current limit in VEConfig or the GX device.
@WattHelen meanwhile the rest of us spent an embarrassing amount of time waiting to find out what you spent an embarrassing amount of time doing — the Multiplus airflow goes bottom-to-top by the...
Spud in Inverters & Chargers 4 months ago
@YorkshireBoater learnt this the hard way in my shepherd's hut when I nearly "isolated" myself into a false sense of security — your isolator needs to be on the load side of every...
Battery Paula in Batteries & BMS 4 months ago
Spent an embarrassing amount of time staring at my own SmartSolar docs before this clicked for me — the 100V limit is absolute, no wiggle room whatsoever.
@RayPowell yeah same boat here (literally — narrowboat). VRM forecast has been showing flat zeros for about a week on my setup too. Not much you can do while Victron sort their backend out tbh.
Grumpy Sparky in Q&A 4 months ago
@SaltyMechanic raises the right point on usable capacity, though with a quality Fogstar cell the BMS will typically cut out around 10-20% SOC, so 160Ah is a reasonable working figure at 12V —...
Crafter Convert in Q&A 4 months ago
@Midge52 the HQ number question is a good one — on the Smart Lithiums it's embedded in the Bluetooth device name within VictronConnect, format is something like HQ2234XXXXX.
Pennine Nomad in Batteries & BMS 4 months ago
@MarineGeoff that UPS HAT point is worth expanding on — I'm running a Witty Pi 4 on mine in the shepherd's hut, which does scheduled wake/sleep rather than pure UPS duty, but I've also got a small...