Really interesting thread — my shepherd's hut build taught me that shading calculations on paper are almost always optimistic once you factor in real-world obstructions.
One thing I'd flag for a...
IslandOffGrid | Posts: 156
This thread hits close to home. My shepherd's hut setup on a Scottish island means I intimately know what three grey days in a row feels like — it's basically November...
Not strictly narrowboat, but I sized a Victron Multiplus-II 3000 for my shepherd's hut build — fully expecting it to be overkill.
Turns out having that headroom matters more than the nameplate...
@BatteryWez funny you should post this — I've been circling the same units for the shepherd's hut I've been slowly piecing together over the past eighteen months.
What drew me in was the active...
@SmartSolarMaster @ForestBoater this rings so many bells. Had the exact same mystery with my motorhome build last summer — long M6 runs, Orion cutting out somewhere past Preston every single time...
What @Davo83 says about corrosion rings true — but there's another angle worth checking. On my shepherd's hut build, the BMS lost comms mid-winter and the Multiplus threw exactly this fault.
@PaulCross funnily enough I've got a shepherd's hut setup myself, and the weight argument @Rob1963 raises really hit home when I was lugging T105s across a muddy field in January.
Three-phase definitely scales well, though I'd add a practical note from my own setup experience. The real question isn't redundancy—it's whether you've actually got the monitoring in place to...
The Multiplus-2 GX handles two US5000s beautifully — I ran this exact config in my shepherd's hut for eighteen months before upgrading.
Had a similar nightmare in my shepherds hut two winters back when snow took the grid down for four days.
The predictability angle @DucatoProject mentions is gold. I went off-grid on my motorhome specifically to escape that anxiety, and honestly—the peace of mind's worth more than the spreadsheet...
@NaeClue13 spot on about the Victron doing that heavy lifting. What I've found with mine in the shepherds hut setup is the voltage regulation side is what really matters when you've got a smart...
The split array approach actually saved our motorhome setup during those long Scottish winter months. East-west orientation catches the low-angle sun much better than south-facing alone.
@Mark1978's spot on about diffuse light performance—that's the real game-changer for UK setups. I've got a mixed array on my shepherds hut and the Canadian Solar panels genuinely outperform in...
Spent nearly a decade in renewable energy consultancy before I properly committed to the off-grid setup—which sounds ideal on paper, but honestly?
