@LazyBodger the AUX input is a bit of a rabbit hole tbh. What are you trying to monitor with it — second battery, midpoint, or temp sensor?
Yeah, mine's gone up again too. Not massively but enough to notice. Octopus sent me the usual "here's why your bill is higher" email which is basically just...
Been planning a van build myself so been doing loads of research lately. A few thoughts on 12V systems:
Panel sizing — most people underestimate how much they actually need.
@BordersExplorer had this exact drama with my 100/20 last summer. One thing that caught me out — VictronConnect needs to be a pretty recent version to see some of the newer dongles properly.
Almost certainly the carb. Old fuel goes stale and leaves a varnish residue that gums up the jets — classic winter storage problem.
Few things to try before pulling the carb apart:
Drain the old...
@LDVCamper the SmartSolar range is hard to beat for reliability tbh. For your mate's secondhand unit, first thing I'd do is hook it up to the VictronConnect app via Bluetooth and check the...
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.
