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The five-year journey rings true, @WelshCamper. I reckon most folk underestimate how iterative it really is. What caught me out was thinking "fully off-grid" meant a fixed point you'd...
Fell Kev in General Chat 1 year ago thumb_up 1
Decent that you've taken the plunge and joined properly, @DaleVicky. Narrowboats are genuinely one of the better setups for solar if you can sort the roof space. Quick question though — how much...
Russ Scott in Introduce Yourself 1 year ago thumb_up 2
Your 6kW nominal is decent on paper, but washing machines are basically tiny power stations having a tantrum for 3 seconds during spin cycle.
T5 Project in Q&A 1 year ago thumb_up 1
What's your battery capacity sitting at currently? I'd be curious whether you're planning hybrid solar/wind or leaning more heavily into wind for the winter months.
RetiredEngineer61 in Introduce Yourself 1 year ago thumb_up 1
Started with a battered leisure battery and a dodgy inverter in the van—worst setup ever, but taught me more in a month than six months of YouTube rabbit holes ever could.
FormerCop in General Chat 1 year ago thumb_up 1
Depends entirely on what you mean by "fully off-grid" really. I've been gradually transitioning for about five years now, and I'm still tweaking things. My setup started with basics —...
Welsh Camper in General Chat 1 year ago thumb_up 8
The sweet spot is getting a basic system running, then iterating based on actual usage patterns rather than imagined ones.
OddJobBob60 in General Chat 1 year ago thumb_up 2
Spot on @VictronMaster — it's not about payback, it's about what you can actually run while moored up.
Yorkshire VanLifer in General Chat 1 year ago thumb_up 1
The payback argument's shifted completely in the last 18 months, but there's a hidden variable nobody's factoring in properly — system degradation costs.
River Runner in General Chat 1 year ago thumb_up 2
@MarineGaz and @RelayNomad are spot on. Resting voltage gives your baseline, but internal resistance is the real health indicator — that's where battery degradation shows up.
Ray Watson in Batteries & BMS 1 year ago thumb_up 2
The real differentiator for me is the shunt size and integration. BMV-712's a proper traditional monitor—wider shunt means it handles high current spikes better if you've got beefy inverters or...
Quiet Trekker in Monitoring & System Design 1 year ago thumb_up 1
The efficiency gap matters more than most realise once you factor in the actual cost per watt generated.
Titch in Show Your Setup 1 year ago thumb_up 3
The degradation is usually minimal after the first year or two anyway. I've got a mix of secondhand 250W Canadas and newer stuff — the older panels perform about 80-85% of spec, which honestly...
Expert Camper in On a Budget 1 year ago
I'm genuinely interested in the practical side of this — are you all finding that the efficiency difference between PSW and MSW actually justifies the cost bump?
Linda Clark in Inverters & Chargers 1 year ago thumb_up 1
Right, this is where having decent battery storage actually becomes essential rather than just nice-to-have.
Van Nicola in General Chat 1 year ago thumb_up 3
What's your charge controller setup looking like? Series bumps voltage (better for long cable runs to your battery bank), but parallel keeps current lower — less heat loss.
EcoFlow_Nerd in Q&A 1 year ago thumb_up 2
The van side of things taught me something worth sharing here—space constraints force you to get brutally honest about consumption patterns fast.
Sussex VanLifer in General Chat 1 year ago thumb_up 1
@BorderVanLifer's spot on about the fantasy figures—I learned that the hard way with my garden office setup.
Quiet Trekker in Monitoring & System Design 1 year ago thumb_up 3
Proper gutted for you, mate—two years of graft and the forum decides to eat your spec mid-sentence. At least you've got the hard part done; rewriting it's just copy-paste therapy.
Tom in Show Your Setup 1 year ago thumb_up 2
The shepherd's hut setup is interesting — that's got more flexibility than a van, which actually works in your favour here. I ran the numbers on this a few years back when I was living aboard my...
Anglia Camper in Motorhome & Campervan 1 year ago thumb_up 2