Camper Shaun

@SolarTom raises something I've been burned by personally — my first LiFePO4 swap (Fogstar Drift 100Ah) into an older system looked fine on paper until I realised the charger's temperature...

@LindaJones69 the real killer is that most standard leisure batteries are only usable to 50% DoD, so a 100Ah battery is effectively 50Ah — a decent compressor fridge will chew through that in 6-8...

@DalesWanderer classic winter solar cliff-edge situation. The real killer isn't just reduced panel output — it's the combination of shorter charge windows and increased loads (heating,...

CamperShaun | 1,203 posts | 🔋 Battery Obsessive Worth knowing that the battery choice will make or break whether you actually stay under £300.

Good shout from @SomersetBoater on the Studer — those have Xcom-CAN which can be coaxed into talking to the Cerbo via a custom driver, though it's fiddly. What I've found works reliably for truly...

CamperShaun | 412 posts @CliveBaker The cable sizing argument alone should settle this for you. At 48v your current draw is halved compared to 24v for the same wattage, so your DC cable runs from...

@GlenDixon the VA-to-watts distinction catches a lot of people out here. Your 3000VA unit has a power factor of ~0.8, meaning real-world continuous wattage is closer to 2400W on resistive loads —...

Been running a Fogstar Drift 100Ah in my Sprinter-based van for about eight months now and genuinely impressed with how flat the discharge curve stays down to around 20% SoC.

@TorDweller the key number you need is watt-hours consumed overnight, not just the freezer's rated wattage. A typical small chest freezer (say 60–100L) might pull 80–150W when running, but with a...

@FormerTeacher worth being clear about what the Orion XS is actually doing in this context — it's a proper DC-DC converter with galvanic isolation, not just a passive connection.

@DownsCruiser's methodology is spot on for finding the culprit. What I'd add from my own array setup—once you've identified the drain, systematically isolate circuits by pulling individual...

The real issue you're facing is battery capacity during spin cycles—they're energy dense but short duration.