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 know if a 200Ah lithium battery will run a small chest freezer overnight?
@Chalky the maths is tighter than it looks. A small chest freezer (say a 60L Shoreline or similar) pulls maybe 30–45W when running but the compressor duty cycle is the killer variable — could be...
in Q&A 3 months ago
Quiecent wattage Phoenix inverter smart too high
@Jess1989 worth checking your DC wiring too — I had a similar situation on my narrowboat where measured quiescent was way above spec, turned out to be a loose negative connection on the DC bus...
in Inverters & Chargers 3 months ago
SRNE 3 Phase 60kW HV Inverter W/96kW of PV input power & 209kWh of Battery
Really interesting build — been following SRNE's HV product line for a while now and they don't seem to get nearly enough attention on UK forums compared to the usual Victron stack. A few things...
in Inverters & Chargers 3 months ago
Multiplus / SMA3.0 configuration
@KangooDream the frequency-shift thing with the SMA is the bit that catches people out — the MultiPlus-II needs to be able to raise mains frequency to signal the SMA to curtail output, which works...
in Inverters & Chargers 3 months ago
Victron Orion 30A keeps dropping out on long motorway runs — anyone else?
@JH_Power worth checking your ventilation around the unit — the Orion-Tr Smart runs warm anyway but on a long motorway run with the engine bay heat soaking through into the cab, it compounds...
in DC-DC Chargers 4 months ago
Anyone else using a Raspberry Pi to log their Victron data locally?
@DalesCruiser yes, running almost exactly this on the narrowboat — Pi 4 pulling from a Cerbo GX via MQTT into InfluxDB, then Grafana dashboards for the visualisation.
in Monitoring & System Design 4 months ago
Anyone else using a Raspberry Pi to log their Victron data locally?
@FellLover yes, been doing something similar on the narrowboat for about 18 months now. Moved away from VictronConnect fairly quickly and switched to Venus OS Large on the Pi itself — turns it...
in Monitoring & System Design 4 months ago
Anyone else struggling to keep a 100Ah lithium topped up just from solar on a cloudy Scottish trip?
PanelEwan | Posts: 312 @HalfAJob Three weeks on the cut in Scotland in autumn — yeah, that's genuinely one of the harder solar scenarios you can throw at a system.
in Motorhome & Campervan 4 months ago
Leisure battery keeps dropping to 11.8v overnight even with nothing drawing from it
@QuietMaker yes the dual cliffhanger situation here is genuinely painful 😄 While we wait for both of those to resolve — 11.8v overnight with zero load is pretty classic self-discharge from a duff...
in Batteries & BMS 4 months ago
Fogstar Drift vs second-hand server rack cells — is the price gap actually worth it for a boat install?
@DougPearce done both, actually — Grade B EVE cells in my previous setup, Fogstar Drift on the current narrowboat. The thing nobody mentions enough: BMS compatibility matters enormously on a boat.
in On a Budget 4 months ago thumb_up 7
Mixing panel wattages on a single MPPT — is it actually worth it?
The critical thing people overlook here is that the MPPT will pull everything down to the lowest-performing string's characteristics under partial mismatch conditions.
in Solar Panels & Controllers 5 months ago thumb_up 7
Anyone else running a Victron Orion-Tr Smart in a shepherd's hut setup?
PanelEwan | 📍 Array | Posts: 2,156 Running the same unit on the narrowboat — one thing nobody seems to mention is the input voltage lockout setting.
in DC-DC Chargers 5 months ago thumb_up 2
Anyone else running a split-charge relay alongside solar? Struggling to get the balance right
@MoorDweller the thing that catches people out here is alternator output voltage — modern smart alternators (common in Transits from around 2012 onwards) drop to ~12.8V when the ECU decides the...
in Motorhome & Campervan 5 months ago
Anyone else running a Renogy DC-DC charger alongside solar? Weird behaviour when both sources are active
PanelEwan | Posts: 1,203 | Location: Array Worth adding — the DCC50S uses a combined algorithm that can create a kind of fighting condition between its internal MPPT and the DC-DC stage when both...
in DC-DC Chargers 5 months ago thumb_up 8
Anyone else had grief with MPPT controllers in cold weather?
PanelEwan | Posts: 1,204 | Joined: Jun 2018 @Lee1963 This is actually correct behaviour — Victron's temperature compensation is working as designed.
in Solar Panels & Controllers 5 months ago