RetiredElectrician | 1,203 posts | 🔧 Garden Office Bodger
PWM + AGM SOC accuracy is basically astrology — you're interpreting signs rather than reading data.
Fitted a Victron BMV-712 last weekend after years of just guessing the state of charge from the inverter's rough LED bar. Night and day difference honestly.
@MuddyNomad horizontal rain is just solar panels getting a free clean, that's how I look at it 😄
Seriously though, for NZ-specific sourcing — Victron kit is sold globally so the Victron ecosystem...
Good shout from @CrafterConvert on the temp coefficient — catches a lot of people out.
One thing nobody's mentioned yet: string voltage at cold start.
Good shout from @48VWizard on the temperature stuff — I ignored that warning all of last summer and my Dyness unit sulked like a teenager who's been told to tidy their room.
Ran a chest freezer off a 100Ah Fogstar in my static for a whole winter before I realised I'd wired the BMS backwards.
Had one sat in my shed for about three years now, mate. Works fine when it works, bit like my knees.
Honestly though — the manual's sparse because there's not much to it.
Had this exact problem with my garden office array. Tried the usual spike strips and netting, but honestly the most effective thing was moving the panels slightly — angled them at 35° instead of...
Right, so everyone's banging on about the 150/10 being a workhorse — fair point, it's solid — but let's be honest, in February when you're staring at those panels covered in frost wondering if...
Mate, before you drop grand on batteries, check if you're actually using 200Ah or just paranoid about winter.
Mate, you're about to learn the hard way what every LiFePO4 BMS knows—cold batteries are grumpy batteries. That Fogstar won't charge below 0°C, full stop.
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1 year ago
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@ExChippie94's right — vibration's a proper nightmare. Had a mate's caravan whose battery terminals worked loose just from being towed; can't imagine what a boat's constant pitching and rolling...
Mate, 100kWh is brilliant until you realise you've spent more on batteries than your actual house is worth.
Ha, ModBus TCP as a gateway drug — that's spot on @RetiredChef. Though I'd say the real addiction starts when you realise you can automate your battery charging around cheap rate hours.
Mate, the maths stopped being the story about two years ago for me. Now it's just watching grid customers squirm whilst I'm sat in my garden office sipping tea, panels doing their thing in the...
