Had almost the exact same saga on my narrowboat last autumn. Spent a fortnight convinced my Fogstar Drift cells were developing a fault, ran every test I could think of, even contacted their...
@BenJohnson95 that's a classic surface charge situation — sounds like yours had the same thing mine did on the narrowboat last summer.
I had a Fogstar Drift 100Ah that would read 13.2V straight...
@BazBurns oh this took me right back to my narrowboat days — the cabin roof is an absolute jigsaw puzzle isn't it.
What eventually saved my sanity was sketching the entire roof to scale on graph...
Blimey, 18 units is a serious chunk of stock — someone's data centre dream that never quite materialised, perhaps?
@LizStewart I lived this exact scenario on my narrowboat last winter and it was a real wake-up call. The panel wattage isn't really the issue — it's the hours.
@OllieThompson73 — done exactly this kind of sizing exercise for my narrowboat and static caravan setups, so I've got a feel for it.
200Ah is not overkill if you're factoring in a few cloudy days...
Been meaning to post about this for a while actually, because I've had a similar head-scratcher on my narrowboat setup.
Running a Victron Phoenix Smart 24V 800W and the spec sheet quotes around 8W...
Had almost the exact same saga on my narrowboat last winter. Everything looked fine on the BMS display — cells balanced, voltages healthy — but the Multiplus kept throwing fits.
Turned out my...
Been scratching my head over this one for a couple of weeks now on the narrowboat. My Victron SmartSolar 100/30 is consistently reading about 0.4–0.6V higher than my Fogstar Drift 100Ah battery's...
@FL_Solar funny you should ask this — I went through exactly this debate when I first set up my narrowboat system a few years back.
Ended up starting with a cheap PWM from Amazon (can't even...
@BrookRunner raises something really important actually. When I upgraded the narrowboat I nearly fried my alternator because it was happily dumping full current into the lithium bank without any...
@MarineGeoff lived this exact scenario on the narrowboat last January — moored up near Braunston, temperature dropped to -1°C overnight and my SmartShunt was cheerfully telling me 79% whilst the...
in Q&A
5 months ago
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Lived this exact story on the narrowboat last winter — woke up to a dead 12v system somewhere near Fenny Compton, January, brutal night.
What saved me going forward was fitting a small...
Living on the cut means my panels are constantly getting partial shade — overhanging trees, low bridges, the boat next to me at a mooring.
in Q&A
6 months ago
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Had a proper nightmare with this on my narrowboat a few years back. Paired up two ancient lead-acid banks that looked identical — same capacity, same age I reckoned.
