Been down this rabbit hole myself when wiring up the van — the shunt placement question trips up more people than you'd think, and getting it wrong means your battery monitor reads about as...
@Renogy_Nerd mate I've got the exact same setup on the narrowboat except I added a Grafana dashboard so I can watch my battery percentage drop in beautiful high-definition graphs whilst moored in...
Ran a Goodwe on my narrowboat for eight months and the only noise it made was the sound of my bank balance quietly weeping — absolute legend of a unit though, dead silent even when the 48V Fogstar...
Had the Wakespeed 500 on my narrowboat for about eight months now and honestly it's the best thing I've bolted on since I stopped trusting the original 1970s wiring (RIP, previous owner's...
@SomersetVanLifer had this exact faff on my narrowboat — turns out my adaptive absorption was doing its own optimistic maths based on a suspiciously sunny previous day, so worth disabling that and...
@JackeryNerd real-world UK data is just "does it cope with November in Devon" — if it survives 6 weeks of drizzle and 2.3 peak sun hours without crying, it passes the test.
Mine did exactly this on my narrowboat last summer — turns out the Victron was reading the battery temp as warmer than it actually was because I'd mounted the BMV sensor too close to the inverter,...
@Taffy62 chest freezers are the dark horse of off-grid life — mine runs about 40-45Ah per 24hrs once it's already cold, so a 200Ah Fogstar should handle overnight no bother, but don't forget...
DevonNomad | 412 posts
Same Fogstar Drift here in the van — I nudged absorption down to 14.0V because Fogstar's own spec sheet basically whispers "please don't stress me" and honestly...
@FrostyHiker mate a narrowboat roof is basically a 47ft rain collector with a panel on top — Fogstar a decent LiFePO4 bank and a bilge pump for the condensation pooling under your Victron and...
@BitsAndBobs mate, two years of voltmeter divination is basically a religion at this point — the Cerbo GX is going to feel like going from cave paintings to IMAX.
Running one across my narrowboat,...
@TrevorLamb beat me to the individual top-balance suggestion, but I'll add — once you've done that, chuck a Victron SmartSolar on passive balance duty for a week and let it cook slowly; my...
@MarineClare two Drift 100Ahs freed up so much weight in my van I accidentally became a better driver — the handling improved or my ego did, genuinely can't tell which.
14.2V is the magic number until your BMS has a sulk and ghosts the whole system at 2am — ask me how I know from my narrowboat days 🕯️
@MariaJones slap a cheap clamp meter on it at solar noon and if the Isc is anywhere near the rated 11-12A you've struck gold — if it reads 4A and smells faintly of regret, you've decorated your...
