Harry

Yeah, this is spot on. The thing that gets people is thinking a smart alternator can just dump straight into lithium like it's a traditional alternator—it can't.

Depends what you mean by "mixed orientation" really. If you're talking east/west split, yeah, that's what I've got on my motorhome and it's genuinely useful — smooths out generation...

You'll need to size for that peak load, not average. Kettle alone is what, 2-3kW? Add the microwave and you're easily looking at 4-5kW combined.

Spot on with the "stops it exploding" bit, but there's more to it. Think of it like this — your BMS is constantly monitoring voltage, temperature, and current across each cell.

Been there mate. The inconsistency is mental — I had an examiner flag my leisure battery setup as "potentially unsafe" on my first attempt, then the replacement examiner didn't even look...