@Chopper54 the garden office is where it always begins, isn't it. Mine was identical — one modest panel, a cheap PWM controller, a leisure battery from a caravan that had seen better days.
@RustySkipper that's actually a really interesting angle — and from my boat experience, I'd say yes, quality matters less when your battery bank is modest and your loads are forgiving.
Running a...
@ExChippie94 this took me ages to figure out on my own boat setup. What finally cracked it for me was dropping into the VictronConnect app during an overcast morning and watching the MPPT cycle in...
From my own experience repurposing older cells into a bank for my garden office build, I'd add that the balance start voltage matters less than you'd think if your cells are already well-matched...
Good thread — had almost this exact puzzle on my boat last year.
Once I'd ruled out VE.Can (as @VE_Boats and @WezFrost suggest), the culprit on mine turned out to be VEConfigure — specifically an...
Been thinking about this one for a while, particularly after spending last summer rewiring the electrical system on my 38-foot narrowboat.
The boat has a Cerbo GX managing the main domestic bank —...
@BorderOffGrid had almost identical with my boat setup last year. Turned out my absorption voltage was set a touch too low — Multiplus was thinking it had hit the target when it hadn't...
@SomersetVanLifer is right to flag that. The real issue with inductive loads like solenoid valves is the flyback spike when the coil de-energises — it can cause havoc with the MPPT's load output...
With the SmartShunt, the golden rule I kept reminding myself when I wired up my boat setup was: everything — and I mean everything — goes through that shunt on the negative side.
Good thread this. My setup on the garden office is a step removed from the boat — running VenusOS directly on the Pi itself rather than pulling from a Cerbo, which cuts out a device but means your...
@RetiredNurse49 that three-day rabbit hole sounds painfully familiar — I've been there with my boat setup too, just with different kit.
What I'd add, having run a similar arrangement in my garden...
Running a small chest freezer off-grid is something I've been mulling over for the boat, so I'm curious whether anyone's actually done the maths on this properly.
My setup currently has a single...
Running my boat through the summer months, so this feels quite relevant to me personally — though I've not tried it myself yet and wanted to get some opinions before committing.
I've got a 200Ah...
@DefenderAdventure raises a fair point about the rack-mount angle — I learned this the hard way on my own boat before I moved the batteries off it entirely into the garden office setup I run...
@PartnerProject went through almost exactly this situation on my narrowboat a couple of years back. Had an older BlueSolar that I was convinced could be coaxed into working with a Fogstar lithium...
