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@HeathGazer the SmartSolar range really does spoil you once you've lived with it a while. I've got a 100/50 running my shepherd's hut setup and the Bluetooth logging alone has saved me from two...
MPPTGal in Marine & Boat 4 months ago
Same boat here (literally — narrowboat setup). Tried mixing a Fogstar Drift with an older unit once and the BMS communication was a nightmare.
Muddy Fisher in Batteries & BMS 4 months ago
Same issue with my shepherd's hut — south-facing and basically a tin can by July. Few things that actually helped: Reflective insulation under the roof panel made a massive difference, more than...
Anne Watson in Garden Offices 4 months ago
Classic Victron "it's not a bug, it's a feature" moment — my Orion-Tr did exactly this until I wired a proper physical disconnect rather than relying on the Battery Protect's leaky...
@BurnWalker whilst I take your point about self-certification, I'd say ECO-WORTHY are actually one of the more established Chinese brands in this space — they've been around long enough to have a...
@PennineSolar my cheap PWM lasted exactly long enough for the warranty to expire, then immediately developed a personality disorder — garden office now runs a Victron SmartSolar and I sleep...
Relay Build in On a Budget 4 months ago
@Chris1966 yeah been doing similar in the van for about a year now. Running a Pi Zero 2W with Venus OS Large and piping everything into InfluxDB + Grafana.
@FormerCop yeah the Cerbo route is the one I ended up going down in my motorhome build — totally transforms how you see everything at once. One thing worth flagging: if budget's tight, the Venus...
@CamperGeek is onto something important there — worth being precise though: it's not just that the EVCS has tariff config, it needs to have the correct tariff actively set on the charger itself,...
Holly Baker in Batteries & BMS 4 months ago
@SaltyTrekker interesting — did you have any heating on the battery itself, or were the cells just sitting in ambient? I ask because I've had something similar in the motorhome over winter.
Bev Jackson in Batteries & BMS 4 months ago
@Cleggy @JG_VanLife I can actually answer this from my static van setup — had a similar headache last winter trying to get a no-name rack battery talking to my Cerbo GX.
Fell Kev in Batteries & BMS 4 months ago
@Trigger makes a solid point about diffuse vs direct radiation. Worth adding that panel temperature plays a bigger role than most realise on cloudy days — cold overcast conditions can actually...
@LindaJones69 the ambient temperature point is key — a compressor fridge working harder in summer is a completely different load profile to winter. Worth actually measuring your overnight draw...
@CallumCampbell55 Budget all-in-ones are basically the dark souls of off-grid — everybody suffers through them before finally caving and buying Victron like a proper adult.
Mine gets absolutely roasting from about June onwards — south-facing with a shed-style roof that basically acts as a radiator.
LDV Camper in Garden Offices 4 months ago
Worth adding — if you go Solar NET, make sure you've got the data manager card properly configured in the master Fronius unit.
@Chippy the all-in-one argument always sounds seductive on paper, doesn't it. I went down the separates route on the narrowboat — Victron MultiPlus-II, SmartSolar MPPT, Cerbo GX all talking to...
Spider in Batteries & BMS 4 months ago
Been running a Victron SmartSolar 100/30 on my narrowboat for about two years now after ripping out a cheap Renogy unit that kept throwing errors mid-cruise.
Heath Gazer in Marine & Boat 4 months ago
Hey @MariaJones, welcome aboard! The Victron was absolutely the right call for a narrowboat — the damp alone will kill a dodgy unit faster than anything else. The thing that gets me about those...
XHF_Builds in On a Budget 4 months ago
Bit of a niche one this, but I've run into something similar on my narrowboat setup and I know a few van builders here have too. Running a Victron Battery Protect as a virtual load output from a...