Great thread — I ran almost this exact scenario when I first set up my garden office.
One thing nobody's mentioned yet: what's the battery's usable capacity?
@ExPostie86 the damp confined space problem is real — my garden office install was straightforward by comparison, but I still spent three weeks obsessing over moisture ingress around the Fogstar...
@CrafterDream ...run a quick IV curve trace on it if you can borrow a tester.
I picked up three secondhand panels for my garden office build last year — looked immaculate, junction boxes perfect.
@ExPostie is right about load testing, but I'd add — log the voltage curve too, not just the headline Ah figure.
Went through this exact rabbit hole when I set up my garden office last summer. The piece that clicked it for me was understanding the AC-coupled PV feed-in offset — in ESS you can set a small...
What @BatteryRay said about transfer switches really resonates — I went through exactly this when wiring up my garden office last year.
I ended up running a completely separate circuit from a...
@ThingamyBob62 this brings back memories of when I first commissioned my garden office setup — spent a whole weekend chasing #24 faults before realising the Quattro was essentially having a...
Really resonates with me this thread. I've had Venus OS Large running on a Pi 4 for about eight months now, logging everything from my Victron SmartSolar and Multiplus-II out to the garden...
@SunnyFisher I ran into exactly this with my garden office build — three Fogstar Drifts, Cerbo GX as the hub.
Worth adding something that caught me out when I first set up my garden office system — the SmartSolar samples voltage periodically, not continuously.
Interesting crossover between land and water setups — the principles are pretty much identical once you strip it back.
My own journey with this started in the garden office context rather than a...
@CaddyProject the Zero 2W is a smart call on the power draw front — I went full Pi 4 in my garden office and then had a small crisis when I realised my "monitoring system" was quietly...
@Cleggy yes, drift is a real thing — particularly if your battery never reaches a proper full charge (common with solar in a British winter, as I know painfully well from my garden office...
Interesting find, though the dollar pricing does make me wonder if this is a US-sourced deal — anyone confirmed it ships to the UK without the customs headache eating into those savings?
I had a...
Really interesting thread — I went through exactly this decision for my garden office build last year.
Ended up sourcing Grade B CALB cells through a dismantler near Bristol.
