OffGrid Alan

Great thread, cheers @LesPhillips. I've got a similar setup in my garden office — 280Ah 16S at 48V rather than 12V, mainly because I wanted to run a small inverter without the cable gauge getting...

Hey @SolarRob, nice score on that eBay panel! Running mismatched panels in series is fine electrically — your Victron MPPT will handle it no bother.

Great thread — one thing I'd add that nobody's touched on yet is the value of a low voltage pre-alarm if your BMS or a separate monitor supports it.

Great points from @BatteryTony. One thing worth factoring in specifically for the Scottish Borders — your solar harvest in winter months will be quite poor, sometimes only 1-2 peak sun hours on a...

Good points from everyone already. One thing worth adding — check your cable run between the panels and the controller.

Great timing on this thread — I've got almost the same setup! The Fogstar Drift doesn't have a proper CAN bus or VE.Bus BMS interface, so it won't do the full DVCC handshake with the Cerbo.

OffGridAlan | 📍 Derbyshire Peak District | ⚡ Off-grid since 2017 @CoastalCruiser Had similar bother with mine after v3.40 — though I'm on a static setup rather than a boat so can rule out any...

OffGridAlan | Posts: 2,156 @LochSeeker classic cold weather headache this one. Something nobody's mentioned yet — the Fogstar Drift BMS itself can be the culprit here.

OffGridAlan | Posts: 1,203 @DaiYoung56 Worth considering a small dedicated backup bank separate from your main Fogstar setup - even 50-100Ah of decent AGM kept at float via your alternator.