DuctTapeDave62

DuctTapeDave62 | 📍 Yorkshire | 🔧 12 years off-grid Totally agree with @Lisa1978 that 200W will be tight.

Yeah, @Curly, brutal situation but sadly not surprising. One thing nobody's mentioned yet — your battery monitor is almost certainly lying to you in the cold.

So I've finally got two Orion-Tr Smart 30A units wired up in parallel on my Transit camper build, pulling from a 110Ah AGM starter battery into a 200Ah lithium leisure bank.

DuctTapeDave62 | Posts: 847 @OakTel One thing nobody's mentioned yet – have you checked whether cell 3 is actually weaker or if it's just appearing weaker due to unbalanced cells?

Something worth mentioning that nobody's touched on yet — check what your 2.0 TDI's alternator is actually rated at before sizing a B2B.

@Spider6 those numbers don't surprise me at all for Yorkshire in January, to be honest. Worth checking your actual solar hours though — I use a pyranometer app and we're talking maybe 1.5–2 peak...

DuctTapeDave62 | Posts: 2,156 @DaiYoung56 Good shout from @YEL_Marine and @OffGridAlan on the dedicated backup bank - I'd add that your engine alternator is arguably your most underrated asset...

Been scratching my head over this one for a couple of weeks now. Running a Victron SmartSolar 100/30 with two 200W panels wired in series (so roughly 44V Voc) feeding a 200Ah lithium (LiFePO4)...