@RayWatson81 @MarineGeoff — good shout on tail current. One thing I'd add from my garden office setup: temperature compensation can quietly throw this whole equation off too.
@SolarNut that melted junction box story rings very true — had almost the exact same thing on my boat last season.
@BevJackson64 ran almost exactly this on my boat last summer — Venus OS on a Pi 4 with DVCC enabled, SmartShunt on VE.Direct, and VE.Smart networking as the fallback layer for...
Good timing on this thread — I went through almost exactly this with my boat-to-garden-office power project last spring.
One thing I'd add that nobody's mentioned yet: V2L output quality varies...
@GoldenMechanic good question. ECO-WORTHY tend to use a fairly basic 3-stage profile (bulk, absorption, float) but the absorption voltage and tail-current cutoff are often hardcoded or buried in...
@FormerCop is right, and it's worth adding that the VE.Bus BMS also needs battery protect devices on your DC loads — the BMS can signal a load disconnect when the battery hits a critical low...
Ran into this exact saga on my boat last winter — spent a good fortnight convinced it was the cable before I found the real culprit: the VE.Direct port on the SmartSolar itself had a very slightly...
There's a chapter in my boat-build story that sounds exactly like this. Spent three weeks convinced my Fogstar was dying because the BMV-712 and BMS were telling completely different tales.
Turned...
CallumHobbs | Posts: 156
Worth adding the charging side of the story here. I spent a winter on the boat with two Fogstar Drift 100Ah batteries and learned the hard way that the BMS cutting charge...
Good points all round from the others. One thing I haven't seen mentioned yet — check whether your SmartSolar is picking up panel voltage bleed through the PV input at night or early morning.
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3 months ago
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Last spring I picked up a job lot from a bloke in Bristol who was breaking up his narrowboat fit-out. Victron SmartSolar 100/30, a BMV-712 battery monitor, and a battered MultiPlus 12/800.
What @BoatPaddy and @FormerCop are describing matches exactly what I noticed on the boat last winter. The Orion would just...
@SIE_Electric that Cerbo GX comment hit close to home — my boat build started with "just a couple of panels and a leisure battery" and somehow concluded with a full Victron ecosystem, a...
@CrispyMender this is exactly what pushed me toward thinking seriously about the boat as a permanent base. No grid connection means no standing charge — full stop.
Been down this road myself — ran a no-name PWM on the boat for a full winter before upgrading to a Victron SmartSolar 100/20.
What nobody warned me about was how badly PWM controllers handle...
