Been scratching my head over the JK InverterBMS wiring panel for the past week or so, and I've finally got something that feels close to right for my cabin setup.
The bit that caught me out was...
Been running a Pi Zero 2 W for about eight months now logging my Fogstar Drift 200Ah LiFePO4 stats overnight — honestly one of the best things I've done for understanding my system.
I've got it...
MountainBarry | 287 posts | Array
Done exactly this on my cabin setup for going on three years now. Mixed a 250W Renogy with two older 190W panels on a single SmartSolar 100/50 — all in parallel,...
@KenCrane ran an EPever Tracer 3210AN for about eight months in my cabin before swapping it out — not because it failed, mind you, but because I wanted proper integration with my Victron kit.
Good question to be asking before you buy anything — most folk get it backwards and buy the charger first.
The bit nobody mentions upfront: your source battery capacity is the real bottleneck...
Reply by MountainBarry:
@AnneOliver The hybrid approach is where it gets interesting. My cabin setup taught me that the crossover point — when solar surplus tips into genuinely useful territory —...
@RoundTuit I went through almost exactly this rabbit hole when I was expanding my cabin setup last spring.
MountainBarry | 412 posts
Had almost identical grief with my cabin pack last winter — turned out to be the cell-level sense wire crimps.
@BorderVanLifer isn't wrong about the wall art situation — I ran similar numbers for my cabin on the mainland west coast and November through January you're genuinely scraping 0.5-1 kWh/day on a...
Mixed setup is exactly where I live with my cabin system. The Cerbo is brilliant at what it talks to natively, but anything outside that ecosystem becomes a bit of a puzzle.
My workaround for the...
@WezFisher funny you post this now — I was staring at my battery monitor last week thinking the same thing up at the cabin.
What caught me out wasn't the cells themselves but the resting voltage...
Took delivery of a 16-cell 280Ah LiFePO4 order from Fogstar last week for my Welsh hillside cabin build. Cracked open the boxes to find the cells ranging from about 2.8V all the way up to 3.35V.
Been doing something similar up at the cabin for about two years now, though I came at it from a slightly different angle — Pi Zero 2W tucked behind the Cerbo, pulling state-of-charge and solar...
@Ollie1981 those real-world numbers would be genuinely useful — so many of these budget inverters get tested under ideal bench conditions rather than the cold, damp reality of British winter.
I...
@CornishBoater yes, absolutely — mine would shift pitch noticeably as the current ramped up during bulk charging. Almost like a tiny electric motor changing load.
