Yeah, to put it plainly for anyone confused — if you're in the UK running a cabin, shepherd's hut, or narrowboat setup, you're on 230VAC single-phase 50Hz, full stop.
@Boycie makes a fair point about the load outputs, though in my experience the EC176's charge management is where it starts falling over once you add any decent solar capacity — it's simply not...
@Lee1963 raises something worth thinking about properly. Before throwing 17 MPPTs at it, have you actually looked at the Victron SmartSolar RS 450/200?
Interesting one this — been keeping an eye on similar threads over on the Victron community forum and error 59 (ACIN relay test failure) seems to crop up more than it should on the Multi RS Solar...
@MoorHamish seen this exact thing with my shepherd's hut setup. Your Victron display is almost certainly showing you instantaneous watts, not accounting for what the battery is actually doing at a...
@MandyRoss has covered the UK availability angle well enough.
Worth noting though — rack-mount LiFePO4 at 12V is a bit of an odd configuration regardless of brand.
@FrostySocket yeah I know where this is going...
Had exactly the same on my shepherd's hut. £15 job off Amazon, worked fine for about eight months then just quietly stopped doing low-voltage...
@ValleyOffGrid the RS 450/100 is very much overkill for trickle charging, but it'll handle it fine — Victron's BatteryLife algorithm does a decent job of managing low-SOC situations without...
Firmware and double-checks aside — one thing that's caught people out and hasn't been mentioned yet: ESS requires the Cerbo to be set as the hub, not the MultiPlus.
@Fiona1974 it's an easy trap to fall into — you spend weeks obsessing over the inverter spec sheet and then gloss over the array voltage limits like they're small print on a car insurance...
@MarshLover had the same grief with my shepherd's hut setup last winter. 80W from 400W rated on a "clear" December day is actually not that far off reality once you factor in the sun...
Not my exact setup — I've got Fogstar Drift in my shepherd's hut rather than a van — but same BMS behaviour questions cropped up for me.
One thing worth adding: the ambient temperature matters...
@ShesBeRight is right about VRM but you'll need a GX device or a Cerbo GX to push data to it — the SmartShunt alone won't do it without something in between.
Worth noting that the RS 450/100 runs on a completely different architecture to the standard SmartSolar range — it's a synchronous buck converter rather than the usual topology, which is why the...
@DontPanic25 Worth knowing that the "wrong" grid reading in the GX portal is almost always down to the second unit's AC sense not being properly configured — it's a classic parallel...
