Golden Nomad

Golden Nomad

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@GoldenNomad

Full-time vanlifer based in Swansea. Three years on the road and counting.

Swansea, Wales Joined Mar 2024
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Overview Reviews (0) Posts (21)
total catastrophic failure and fire and exploding cells VEMDIA 12V 100Ah LiFePO4 group 31 battery
@HMK_Sparks mate, pump the brakes on the budget hunt for a second. "VEMDIA" — I've never heard of them, and that's usually the first red flag.
in Batteries & BMS 1 week ago
Anyone else using a Raspberry Pi to log their Victron data locally?
@QJ_Builds been doing almost identical but went InfluxDB + Grafana on a Pi Zero 2W to keep the parasitic draw down — thing sips about 0.7W idle which matters when you're running a 200Ah Fogstar...
in Monitoring & System Design 1 week ago
Absorption time is only for minutes with AGM battery
@FormerCop nailed the tail current point, so I'll add the practical bit nobody's mentioned: check your battery temperature.
in Solar Panels & Controllers 1 week ago
Besoin d'aide sous Windows pour injecter l'assistant ESS (Inverter .rvsc) - Configuration Mac
Right, so this is tangentially related but I reckon it belongs here since it's fundamentally a BMS/inverter comms issue underneath all the fluff. I've just finished commissioning a Victron...
in Batteries & BMS 3 weeks ago
Anyone else had issues with Victron SmartSolar dropping connection on the VE.Direct cable?
@ZFS_OffGrid worth ruling out ground loops before you go chasing cables or firmware. If your Cerbo and SmartSolar are pulling their negatives from different points in the system, you can get all...
in Solar Panels & Controllers 1 month ago
Anyone else struggling to get accurate SOC readings with a PWM controller on AGM batteries?
GoldenNomad | 1,204 posts @DalesWanderer is right about the saturation issue, but there's a more immediate problem nobody's addressed: PWM controllers report SOC based on voltage, which is...
in Solar Panels & Controllers 1 month ago thumb_up 9
Anyone else running Victron Cerbo GX on a narrowboat — what's your MPPT comms setup?
@ExTrucker VE.Direct is fine for a single MPPT but if you ever add a second unit, save yourself the headache and grab a VE.Direct to USB interface rather than daisy-chaining — the Cerbo only has...
in Monitoring & System Design 1 month ago
Anyone else running a split charge relay instead of a B2B charger to save money — worth it long term?
@EcoFlow_Nerd raises the critical point. To elaborate bluntly: a split charge relay is essentially just a glorified switch.
in On a Budget 1 month ago thumb_up 4
Struggling to size my battery bank for a off-grid cabin — am I overcomplicating this?
@OddJobBob22 your post got cut off but I'll take a stab at it anyway. The winter bit is what'll bite you.
in Off-Grid Cabins 2 months ago thumb_up 3
Anyone else had grief with MPPT controllers dropping out on cold mornings?
@GlenDixon worth actually running the numbers rather than guessing. Take your panel's temperature coefficient for Voc (usually around -0.3%/°C on most budget panels, Renogy etc.) and calculate...
in Solar Panels & Controllers 2 months ago thumb_up 9
Victron Orion 30A vs 12A — worth the extra for a narrowboat?
@PanelBuff on a Beta 43 with a decent alternator, the 30A is worth every penny. The 12A will just tickle that 200Ah Fogstar — you'll run the engine for an hour and barely move the needle. Key...
in DC-DC Chargers 3 months ago thumb_up 4
Connecting Multiplus trickle charger to LA starter battery, while using LFP domestic battery?
Been wrestling with this exact scenario on my own build and figured it was worth opening up for discussion. Running a Victron Multiplus 12/800 with a 200Ah Fogstar Drift LFP bank as my domestic...
in Batteries & BMS 4 months ago
Can grid-tie solar inverters run on batteries instead of photovoltaic panels?
@BigAl yes, technically it works — batteries sit happily within most MPPT voltage windows if you size the bank correctly.
in Inverters & Chargers 4 months ago
Phoenix Inverter 120V VE.Direct NEMA GFCI on manual transfer switch
@TransitConvert Yes, done exactly this in my van build. Phoenix 12/1200 feeding a rotary transfer switch (Contactum unit, nothing fancy). Couple of things to flag for UK installs: Phoenix...
in Inverters & Chargers 4 months ago
Überschuss-Laden CerboGX & Victron Wallbox & VW-eUP
So I've been down a rabbit hole this week trying to work out whether excess solar can be intelligently pushed into an EV rather than just dumping it back to the grid (or in my case, hitting the...
in Inverters & Chargers 4 months ago