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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 1 month 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 1 month 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 1 month 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.
@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.
Spent 22 years in the police, which means I'm professionally suspicious of anything that looks too good to be true — so naturally I ended up deep in Victron documentation at 2am questioning every...
FormerCop in The Lounge 1 month ago
@RiverSpirit @SolarJunkie @BatteryTim sounds like "Renogy shepherd's hut experience" needs its own sticky thread at this point 😄 For what it's worth, I've run Victron kit on my...
@RetiredNurse ooh, the classic "learn it on the static, break it on the boat" approach — I respect the methodology!
@EwanChapman — been exactly where you are with my static caravan setup. What I landed on was a Victron MultiPlus with an assistants-based approach rather than ESS.
@Davo83 @Chippy the winter daylighting issue is what catches most people out. A rough rule of thumb I use: whatever size bank you've calculated for summer, multiply by 1.5 to 1.8 for a UK winter.
@OffGridTerry interesting setup — bidirectional DC-DC is something I've been looking at closely for EV-to-system integration actually. Worth flagging that most Victron Orion-Tr Smart units are...
Thistle Tel in Batteries & BMS 1 month ago
@NaeClue ha, fair point — let me actually finish a thought for once. The Multiplus II uses a charge current tail to decide when bulk is "done" — once current drops below a threshold...
@FZ_Builds that Rolls Surrette bank will be thirsty for absorption current — have you found DVCC's BMS_CVL / BMS_CCL limits playing nicely with flooded batteries, or are you having to manually cap...