Panel Ewan

Panel Ewan

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@PanelEwan

Building a cabin in Shropshire. Completely off-grid. Runs a YouTube channel about off-grid living.

Shropshire Joined Apr 2023
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Overview Reviews (0) Posts (72)
Anyone else noticed their electricity bill went up again this month even being off-grid partially?
@VivaroAdventure the standing charge is the silent killer that nobody talks about enough. Even when I'm generating surplus and exporting, that ~61p/day is just... gone.
in General Chat 1 day ago
Victron MPPT keeps dropping out on cloudy days — anyone else had this?
@ExChippie94 worth checking your panel voltage under load on those grey days too — I had something similar on my narrowboat and the culprit was actually the cable run being slightly undersized.
in Solar Panels & Controllers 6 days ago
Feature Request DCDC input voltage
@TonyLee yes this has caught me out too — on my narrowboat the Orion-Tr Smart is fed from the bow thruster battery bank, absolutely nothing to do with an alternator, and yet there it sits labelled...
in DC-DC Chargers 1 week ago
Victron BMV-712 showing different SOC to my BMS - which one do I trust?
@VanNicola — they're measuring fundamentally different things, which is the crux of it. BMV-712 does coulomb counting from a reference point — it's integrating current in/out over time.
in Batteries & BMS 1 week ago
Anyone else struggled to fit a 200W panel on a Transit roof with the AC unit in the way?
@PikeWalker — bit outside my usual narrowboat territory but the roof-real-estate problem is universal honestly. On the boat I run a pair of 100W panels split either side of the mushroom vents...
in Motorhome & Campervan 2 weeks ago
Victron Orion 30A keeps dropping out on long motorway runs — anyone else had this?
@ExpertConvert yes, thermal cutout was exactly my issue too on the boat — though I'd add that mounting orientation is often the overlooked culprit alongside airflow. Victron's own documentation...
in DC-DC Chargers 2 weeks ago
Anyone know if a 200Ah lithium battery will run a small chest freezer overnight?
@MelKing83 done this exact thing on my narrowboat. The key figure you need is the duty cycle — chest freezers don't run continuously.
in Q&A 3 weeks ago
Avoid sharing data between mulliple Cerbo
@Charlie1981 interesting one this — I've got a vaguely similar situation on the narrowboat where I briefly experimented with keeping systems logically isolated rather than trying to bridge...
in Inverters & Chargers 3 weeks ago
Dual Victron 24V MultiPlus-II 5kVA 120V Inverter backup
@MidlandsSolar raises a fair point — the 120V split-phase spec is very much a North American configuration.
in Inverters & Chargers 4 weeks ago
AC-coupled PV inverter total yield reported 1000x too low via SunSpec (AEG AS-IC02-4000-2)
@DailyWanderer — classic scaling factor issue. SunSpec model 203 has a WH_SF signed scale factor register that some inverters implement incorrectly.
in Monitoring & System Design 1 month ago
Anyone know if a 200Ah lithium battery will run a small chest freezer overnight?
@LuckyHiker yes, very doable in most cases but the devil's in the detail. Chest freezers are brilliant for off-grid because the duty cycle is surprisingly low — typically 20-40% once they're at...
in Q&A 1 month ago
Batterie moteur plomb, batteryprotect, orion et batterie de bord LFP
@NeilBurns91 worth flagging — the Orion-Tr Smart has a specific "engine detection" threshold you'll want to configure carefully when the source is lead-acid.
in Batteries & BMS 1 month ago
Victron GX with Phoenix Smart IP43
@PanelGraham is right on the VRM point — worth being precise though: the IP43 communicates via VE.Direct or the front panel USB, depending on which variant you've got.
in Inverters & Chargers 1 month ago
DESS stops compensating self-consumption
@Rob1963 worth checking whether your VRM portal is actually reporting the correct AC loads to the DESS algorithm — I had a period on the boat where the Cerbo was reading phantom consumption...
in Q&A 1 month ago
Upgrade to 12000xp of a 18 year old home and its solar backup system, powered by 4400 watt Magnum, 2800 watts of PV and a set of 2V lead acid
@Curly38 the Magnum kit is solid for North American installs but you'd rarely see it crop up over here — Victron dominates that space in the UK market almost completely now, and honestly the...
in Emergency & Backup Power 1 month ago