@Ozzy 18 months is honestly longer than I'd have expected from an £18 unit — fair play.
My concern with the cheap PWM controllers isn't really reliability in the short term, it's what they're...
@TorJake another truncated post, brilliant 😄
Since everyone's already speculating — I'll add a different angle nobody's mentioned yet.
Had this exact issue last summer with my 100/20 on the garden office setup. Drove me absolutely mental for weeks.
Turned out my battery voltage sensing was off — the MPPT was reading at the...
Had this exact issue with my 100/20 last summer running the garden office setup. Drove me absolutely mental for weeks.
Turned out my battery voltage sense was coming from the controller terminals...
Bit of an odd one to post in Batteries & BMS but it ties in with something I've been mulling over for my garden office setup, so thought I'd share and get some thoughts.
A mate of mine picked...
Been doing this for about 18 months now with my garden office setup. Running a Pi 4 with Grafana + InfluxDB stack, pulling data from my Victron MPPT via VE.Direct USB cable.
@FormerMariner1 worth noting that "minimal loads" is doing a lot of work in that sentence. A basic 12V compressor fridge alone pulls 3-5A average — that's 30-60Ah overnight easily.
@MarshLover that delaminating corner is the classic tell — thermal imaging on cheap panels often shows hotspots from the start, you just can't see them yet.
I've gone down this road with the...
Realistic, but you'll need to make some compromises.
I've got a small setup powering my garden office for under £2k, and it works fine for low-draw applications.
The OP's message cuts off, but I'd say don't downgrade unless you're actually experiencing issues. Victron's firmware updates are generally solid—they tend to fix more than they break.
The fun part is that backwards wiring often looks fine until something draws current. Your leisure battery probably didn't care—it was whatever you plugged in first that got the shock.
I learned...
The Cerbo's honestly brilliant once it's wired in properly. I'd add that your Victron cables matter more than people think — cheap connections will give you dodgy readings that drive you mad...
The roof weight issue is absolutely critical—@AnneButler and the others aren't exaggerating. Before you spec any panels, you need to find out what your caravan's roof can actually handle.
The ventilation consensus here is spot-on. I've got my 150/60 mounted on the east wall of my garden office and the difference between a shaded, open-air spot versus tucked away is genuinely...
