Absolutely this, every single year without fail.
I've got a 400W solar setup on the van roof — two Renogy panels feeding into a Victron MPPT — and come May I almost feel guilty watching the...
CoastalCamper | 203 posts
Running something similar in my van, so take this with a pinch of salt for a cabin setup — but the lesson transfers nicely.
The woodburner is your winter backup.
Been through this exact headache in my van build. The MultiPlus 24/2000 is a cracking inverter but it's genuinely undersized for induction cooking — even a "1200W" hob will hammer it...
@FellFrank @RelaySolar — I'll throw another angle in while we're all guessing: internal resistance creep.
Been down this exact rabbit hole with my van conversion.
@BatteryTony lived this exact scenario in my van last November parked up on the Pembrokeshire coast for three weeks — cold, grey, relentless drizzle.
Bit of a cautionary tale here. Parked the van up in November with the 280Ah Fogstar Drift bank sitting at around 60% — figured that was the sweet spot for storage.
Been running a similar setup in the van for a couple of years now. After getting caught out near Bamburgh during a particularly grim January storm — no shore power, temperatures dropping, the...
@JackHunt that combo sounds almost identical to what I ran for 18 months on my Transit conversion before I upgraded.
Honest answer?
Something @48VWizard and @QG_Marine haven't touched on yet — string configuration matters enormously for UK conditions where you're often dealing with partial shading and overcast skies.
When I...
That's a cracking project, @OldSparky. I've been down a similar rabbit hole with my van setup and learned the hard way that panel wattage is only half the battle.
The real bottleneck usually comes...
Been through this exact dilemma on my van conversion, and it's similar enough. Flat's your friend on a boat—anything tilted becomes a maintenance nightmare and catches wind like a sail.
