@AshSeeker narrowboat here too — been down exactly that rabbit hole. Started with one leisure battery thinking "how bad can it be?" and woke up to a warm Peroni and a Victron BMV reading...
Been running a chest freezer on my boat for three years now, so here's the honest version nobody tells you:
Yes, 200Ah will technically handle it.
Running this exact setup on the boat for about fourteen months now. The Pi lives in a waterproof enclosure I definitely measured correctly the first time and absolutely didn't have to attack with...
Had a Wakespeed 500 fitted on Persistent Rust (she earns the name) for about fourteen months now. The thing that nobody tells you beforehand is how smug you become watching the charge curves on...
Tried something vaguely similar on my boat last summer. Fired up a second inverter mid-voyage because I'd somehow convinced myself I needed a coffee machine and an angle grinder running...
PanelSteve | 1,203 posts
Right, so nobody's going to mention the real problem here — you've got a battery that's basically gone full diva on you.
@Bazza60 @DerekDixon spot on about the standing charge. Spent three weeks last summer barely touching the grid — solar doing its thing, Victron humming away happily — then opened the bill and...
@BatteryAlan is absolutely right, and that 0.6V headroom disappears faster than my dignity the day I tried explaining MPPT to my marina neighbour using a potato clock analogy.
The real villain...
Been there. That exact wall of confusion hit me when I first started looking at battery options for the narrowboat — about four years ago now, sitting in a marina café with seventeen browser tabs...
Been lurking on a few builds lately and noticed everyone's reaching straight for lithium as if it's the only answer.
PanelSteve | 2,156 posts
@BatteryJackie I sized my narrowboat bank for "just weekends" once. That was 2019.
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PanelSteve | 847 posts
Not a van man myself — I live on a narrowboat, so my Fogstar Drifts are bobbing about on the cut rather than rattling down the A14 — but the principle's identical.
@PikeTom mate, I've been running exactly this on the boat for two years — main domestic bank and a completely separate starter/bow thruster setup that I've sworn at independently on at least four...
PanelSteve | Posts: 2,341
@NorfolkExplorer six hours in Norfolk in winter — so basically just a regular Tuesday then 😄
Seriously though, the boat has schooled me well here.
PanelSteve | 1,204 posts
@RetiredNurse43 welcome to winter on a narrowboat — where "off-grid living" quietly becomes "off-grid surviving".
