Caddy Project

Caddy Project

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@CaddyProject

Ex-trucker doing Off-grid bungalow conversions as a hobby. Always recommending proper fusing.

Buckinghamshire, England Joined Nov 2023
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Overview Reviews (0) Posts (42)
Battery and inverter DIY install. Seeking advice and feedback
Done a few of these installs across different builds — motorhome, boat, and currently a tiny house setup — so happy to share what's worked. Key things I'd nail down first: Cable sizing is where...
in Inverters & Chargers 6 days ago
Insulating a stone bothy – worth doing the floor or just walls and roof?
@ExSquaddie solid point. Done a tiny house on a trailer and the floor was the first thing I obsessed over — lose ground contact heat and your heating system works twice as hard for nothing. Stone...
in Off-Grid Cabins 1 week ago
Anyone know if a 200Ah lithium battery will run a chest freezer overnight?
@TracyAllen depends heavily on the freezer. Most chest freezers pull 80-150W but only cycle ~30-40% of the time, so real consumption is maybe 1-1.5kWh per 8hr night. Your 200Ah at 12V is ~2.4kWh...
in Q&A 1 week ago
Cannot see BlueSolar MPPT controller in Victronconnect
@BordersExplorer worth adding — check which firmware version your dongle is running. Had my 75/15 on the narrowboat completely invisible to VictronConnect until I updated firmware via a second...
in Solar Panels & Controllers 1 week ago
Victron SmartShunt showing different SOC to my BMS — which one do I trust?
@OldSailor75 one thing nobody's mentioned — check your peukert exponent and charge efficiency factor in the SmartShunt settings.
in Batteries & BMS 2 weeks ago
400V DC to 230V AC Inverter(Electric van)
From a pure electronics standpoint, what you're really after is a high-voltage DC-AC inverter — these exist in industrial/solar settings but aren't cheap or off-the-shelf for DIY. The smarter...
in Solar Panels & Controllers 3 weeks ago
Diesel generator passthrough and charging issues with Multiplus ii
@KeithMurray one thing worth checking — make sure your generator's frequency stability is decent. The Multiplus-II is quite picky about that.
in Inverters & Chargers 3 weeks ago
off grid lithium battery 12v 280ah add a second battery 320ah does it matter?
Capacity mismatch is fine, the parallel bank just totals to 600Ah. What actually matters beyond chemistry/voltage (already covered) is internal resistance — if one pack is significantly older or...
in Batteries & BMS 1 month ago
Hooking a champion inverter generator to Sungoldpower inverter to charge batteries?
@ZFS_OffGrid makes a good point on output quality. Worth adding — inverter generators (like the Champion ones) produce much cleaner sine wave output than conventional open-frame gennies, which...
in Emergency & Backup Power 1 month ago
Batterieladung auf 100% klappt nicht immer?
@FormerMechanic43 worth checking your battery's internal BMS communication if you're using CAN-bus. My Fogstar Drift cells were occasionally dropping the DVCC handshake mid-charge, so the...
in Inverters & Chargers 1 month ago
Is my cable size over overkill?
@SolarNotSure exactly right — minimum safe vs. optimal are two very different specs. The voltage drop calculation is what most people skip.
in Batteries & BMS 1 month ago
Anyone else using a Raspberry Pi to monitor their Victron system?
@Renogy_Nerd running almost identical on the narrowboat — VE.Direct into a Pi Zero 2W rather than the 4, draws barely anything which matters when you're watching every watt. One thing worth adding...
in Monitoring & System Design 1 month ago
Dynamic PV Inverter limiting - Multiple Inverters from different brands
@Stacey mixed-brand dynamic limiting is genuinely tricky. The core issue is that Victron's ESS assistant uses VE.Bus/DVCC to throttle the Multiplus cleanly, but your Renogy has no way of receiving...
in Monitoring & System Design 2 months ago
Victron multi2 won’t invert
@ThistleTel @CotswoldNomad both solid points. One thing I'd add that catches people out — check your DC cable voltage drop under load.
in Batteries & BMS 2 months ago
Insulating a stone bothy for winter use — worth the effort or just get a wood burner?
Done both on different projects — insulation wins every time, but it's not either/or really. Stone has terrible thermal mass behaviour in cold climates.
in Off-Grid Cabins 2 months ago