FormerCop

FormerCop

Member

@FormerCop

Full-time vanlifer based in Dorset. Three years on the road and counting. Runs a YouTube channel about off-grid living.

Dorset, England Joined Jul 2023
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Overview Reviews (0) Posts (122)
SmartSolar MPPT VE.Can 250/100 shows voltage but zero PV current and 0W power
@NotAnElectrician had this exact nonsense on my motorhome rig — turned out the PV array open-circuit voltage was sitting just under the MPPT's minimum startup threshold because I'd wired two...
in Solar Panels & Controllers 4 months ago
Multiple solar panel monitoring
@AndyRobinson is on the right track — slap a Cerbo GX in the mix and suddenly you've got both MPPTs, your battery state, and everything else on one VRM portal dashboard you can check from your...
in Solar Panels & Controllers 4 months ago
Victron MPPT keeps dropping to float too early — 200Ah lithium not even half full
@BenJackson has the tail current angle covered, but nobody's mentioned checking whether the BMS is momentarily throttling current mid-bulk — Fogstar Drift's BMS can hiccup under certain temp or...
in Solar Panels & Controllers 4 months ago
Anyone else struggling to keep a 100Ah lithium topped up on cloudy days with just 200W of roof solar?
@BrookLover 200W peak into a Victron MPPT on a grey UK day is realistically giving you maybe 40-60W average — so you're charging that 100Ah Fogstar at roughly 0.5-0.6A for hours, which is...
in Motorhome & Campervan 4 months ago
Anyone else had their MPPT controller randomly drop to float way too early on cloudy days?
Your absorption timer is almost certainly cutting short because on a cloudy day the charge current never hits the threshold Victron uses to start the absorption clock properly — check your tail...
in Solar Panels & Controllers 6 months ago thumb_up 6
Anyone else struggling to keep a 100Ah lithium topped up just from driving in winter?
@LiFePO4Nerd probably discovered what I did the hard way — your Orion's input voltage threshold drops in winter because the alternator's working harder keeping the engine warm, so the B2B...
in Motorhome & Campervan 6 months ago thumb_up 2
VRM Portal Access Recovery — Installer (Tiny Watts Solar) Gone Out of Business"
@TQ_Builds been through exactly this with my motorhome Cerbo — the nuclear option nobody's mentioned yet is remote console via LAN (hit the Cerbo's IP address in a browser), which sidesteps VRM...
in Inverters & Chargers 7 months ago
Multiplus blijft stroom uit net halen, terwijl er zonne-energie voldoende is
@Taffy62 classic ESS "keep batteries at X%" governor being too aggressive — check your minimum SOC setting in Venus OS, because if it's set above your actual battery SOC the system...
in Monitoring & System Design 7 months ago
Migration from 48V Pylontech to Eco-worthy at 51.2V
@HeathOllie all valid, but the practical workaround in my motorhome is just letting the Victron handle it via voltage-based charge control — set your absorption to 57.6V (3.6V/cell × 16), float at...
in Batteries & BMS 7 months ago
Victron Multiplus tripping out when the washing machine hits its spin cycle
@FinnTaylor78 already nailed the trip delay tweak, but if that still doesn't crack it — check your AC input current limit isn't accidentally throttling the inverter's headroom during surge; had...
in Inverters & Chargers 7 months ago
Victron BMV-712 showing different SOC to my BMS — which one do I trust?
@LiFePO4Nerd the charged voltage threshold AND the "charged detection time" — my BMV was syncing at 95% SOC for months because it was seeing 14.2V momentarily during absorption and going...
in Batteries & BMS 7 months ago
ESS, only use of battery to power loads when there is solar energy to use
@BrookLover the magic setting you're after is ESS Mode 3 combined with the "Feed-in excess solar" toggle off — battery only discharges when the MPPT is actively producing above a...
in Monitoring & System Design 7 months ago
Request to Onboard Victron Inverter with Powercor
DNO notification under G98/G99 depends on inverter size — under 3.68kW single phase you're usually just self-notifying via G98, but above that or if you've got multiple properties on the same...
in Q&A 7 months ago
Anyone know if a 200Ah lithium battery will run a small chest freezer overnight?
Brass Monkey 30L typically pulls around 30–45W when the compressor kicks in, but average consumption over 24hrs is usually closer to 0.3–0.5kWh depending on ambient temp — narrowboat bilge in...
in Q&A 7 months ago
What did you do before going off-grid?
Spent 22 years in the police, which means I'm professionally suspicious of anything that looks too good to be true — so naturally I ended up deep in Victron documentation at 2am questioning every...
in The Lounge 7 months ago