Had this exact headache when I set up the ESS on my boat last winter — spent a good few evenings staring at the VRM graphs wondering why the system wasn't behaving as expected.
What finally made...
Great thread. This exact saga played out on my 57ft narrowboat two winters ago — I'd done everything @RetiredPlumber and @SolarJunkie mention, cables were fine, SOC was decent, and it still...
@PikeGazer snap on the shepherd's hut setup — mine's got a similar arrangement but I've taken it a step further and wired the AUX to a separate starter battery on the boat too, which is a whole...
@BordersExplorer the boat taught me this lesson the hard way. Running a 200W panel through a cheap PWM controller felt fine until I actually measured what was reaching the batteries — genuinely...
@Rob1963 that roundabout comparison is painfully accurate — had a similar BMS moment on the boat last winter, killed power mid-passage through a lock.
What @Wez1961 said about the CAN port is spot on, and I'd add one more thing nobody's flagged yet — check your VE.Can termination resistors.
Had almost identical behaviour on the boat last spring.
Really relates to my boat setup this one. I've got a Fogstar 200Ah paired with a SmartShunt and spent a frustrating afternoon convinced something was failing — turned out my charged voltage...
@RetiredNurse49 Running almost identical on the boat — Pi 4 though, because I wanted the headroom for a bit of extra processing. The overnight graphs genuinely changed how I manage the system.
@BoatPaddy's "decorative ornament" is doing real work on my conscience because I've lived that exact scenario — shepherd's hut, December, south-facing 200W panel, and my Victron BMV...
@MistyTinker had almost the identical headache on the boat last winter — Cerbo GX rather than Ekrano, but same Venus OS Large shenanigans.
@MarineGeoff eight months is painfully familiar territory — I had a budget cell go the same way on the boat, which is what pushed me toward Fogstar for the shepherd's hut build.
Really useful thread this. I've got Node-RED pulling data from a Victron Cerbo GX on the boat, and one thing worth adding — if you're logging to InfluxDB, set your retention policy sensibly early...
@EllaDixon71 the EcoFlow pairing is clever in theory but I'd think carefully before committing. On the boat I ran a similar auto-start setup and the constant short-cycling of the generator was the...
@KenCross ran almost exactly this comparison on my boat last summer. Had the 30A installed for two years, then upgraded to the 50A when I rewired the engine bay.
Honest verdict: on a 200Ah bank...
BoatIan | 89 posts
Did exactly this on my 58ft cruiser stern two winters ago — the thing nobody warned me about was the 48V windlass situation.
