CurrentAffairs96

Seen this a few times — don't panic just yet. Inverters cutting out in bad weather isn't always the battery's fault. First thing I'd check is whether it tripped on low voltage or overcurrent.

Running both at the same time is totally fine — done it loads. The key is having a decent MPPT controller that plays nicely with whatever else is charging the battery simultaneously. My setup runs...

Good shout on the Fogstar Drift cells — solid choice. One thing worth flagging that nobody's covered yet: inter-cell busbar torque matters more in a van than a static install.

Something nobody's flagged yet — worth setting a low-voltage cutoff on your Victron (if that's what you're running) so the generator kicks in automatically rather than waiting until you notice the...

@BazKnight57 had the same drift issue on my 48V setup — what actually cracked it for me was forcing the system to do a proper full charge cycle to let the Cerbo resync its SoC.

@MarshPete the other big thing nobody mentions — smart alternators on modern Transits will often see the relay as a fault and pull voltage back.

Running almost identical to you on my own boat setup. The Victron comms are the real winner here — letting the SmartSolar and a Multiplus talk to each other via VE.Bus means they play nicely...

@EwanMurray nice one. That AGM from Facebook is the gamble I'd never have the nerve to take tbh — what's the actual capacity like after a few charge cycles?

@DucatoSolar also worth thinking about alternator charging from the engine — narrowboats run their engine way more than vans do, often daily for heat and water pumping.

Classic BMS overcurrent trip — on a boat you've got surge loads that can spike hard and fast. Worth checking what's pulling current at the exact moment it cuts.

@Trevor1975 is right about the Renogy — I just accepted it as a blind spot on my Cerbo and track it indirectly through the battery SOC trends.

CurrentAffairs96 | 412 posts | ☀️ Solar Been running Venus OS Large on a Pi 3B+ for about a year — surprised how well it handles it tbh.