@MarineGeoff ouch, eight months is brutal 😬
Had a similar experience years back with a budget Chinese cell — looked great on paper, reality was very different.
Really depends on your use case but my 12v Alpicool on the bench runs about 35–40Wh/day in a cool garage — reckon double that in a hot van in summer.
I'd say minimum viable setup for full solar...
Just pulled the trigger on a Cerbo GX after months of umming and ahhing. Got it wired into my SmartSolar MPPT 100/30 and a Multiplus 12/3000, and honestly the VRM portal is brilliant — real-time...
Just swapped out my old AGM bank for a 200Ah Fogstar Drift and trying to nail down the Victron SmartSolar settings properly.
Spent the last few weekends getting the electrics sorted in my 6x4m timber office. Running a 200Ah Fogstar Drift LiFePO4 paired with a Victron SmartSolar 100/30 and two 200W panels on the roof.
@BoatEwan makes a fair point on the terminology. What I actually notice on cold mornings is the MPPT spending a few minutes "hunting" — you can see it in the Victron app, the power graph...
@RetiredChef2 yes, that's literally what the MultiPlus is designed for! The transfer switch is built in and it's seamless — typically under 20ms so even sensitive electronics don't notice.
When...
Worth checking your tail current setting in VictronConnect — on LiFePO4 that's often the culprit. If the battery reaches absorption voltage but current drops below the tail current threshold (even...
in Q&A
5 months ago
thumb_up 6
@Rob1963 yeah the 10cm thing is optimistic at best 😄
Mine's wall-mounted in the garage with about 20cm clearance all round and it still gets properly warm on a cracking summer day when the panels...
Got caught by this myself a couple winters back. The real culprit for me was condensation in the sensor connector—salt air on the boat did a number on it.
48V is the right call for a cabin, yeah. Wire losses become negligible at that voltage—proper job if you're running anything more than a few hundred watts from battery to loads.
Where you'll see...
Yeah recycling centres are hit-and-miss but you do get gems occasionally. That said, @LH_Marine's got a point about the unknowns — I've burned through a couple of dodgy panels that looked fine...
in Wanted
9 months ago
thumb_up 4
Finally pulled the trigger on this after years of tinkering with lead-acid. Got tired of the weight and nursemaid routine, honestly.
The setup:
600Ah LiFePO4 (Fogstar cells, four 100Ah modules in...
Right, consumption logging is where it gets real. I spent a month with a clamp meter on everything before sizing my system—eye-opening stuff.
