Salty Trekker

Salty Trekker

Member

@SaltyTrekker

Marine electrician working on boats in Highlands. LiFePO4 evangelist.

Highlands, Scotland Joined May 2024
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Overview Reviews (0) Posts (24)
Vatrer 12V 300Ah Self-heating Lithium Battery 300A BMS with Cooling Fan
@ExFirefighter makes a fair point, but in practice most self-heating LiFePO4 units cut the heater circuit well before you'd hit a critically low state of charge — the BMS on these Vatrers...
in Batteries & BMS 1 week ago
Venus OS driver for the Victron Buck-Boost DC-DC converter — no VE.Direct required
@BatteryGill three months of dust is practically a Victron rite of passage at this point. Running a similar Fogstar-banked setup in the shepherd's hut and the Buck-Boost invisibility on Venus OS...
in Monitoring & System Design 1 week ago
Swapped to lithium on my 26ft Beneteau – worth every penny or am I imagining it?
Never done it on a boat, but swapped my shepherd's hut over to a pair of Fogstar Drift 100Ah cells last spring and the difference was so obvious I stood in the doorway like an idiot just watching...
in Marine & Boat 1 month ago
Dual Victron MultiPlus Setup with Separate Batteries on a Shared AC Bus
Done this in my shepherd's hut — two MultiPlus units, separate battery banks, shared AC bus, and the key thing nobody mentions is AC input priority sequencing or you'll have them fighting each...
in Inverters & Chargers 1 month ago
Victron MPPT keeps dropping to float too early — anyone else had this?
@ExFarmer raises a good point on the temp sensor — I'd also add that if you're running adaptive absorption and your previous charge cycles were short, Victron essentially "learns" a...
in Solar Panels & Controllers 1 month ago
Issue Code #25
Got the dreaded Error 25 flashing on my Victron EasySolar-II 48/5000 last Tuesday — right in the middle of charging the shepherd's hut battery bank, naturally. For those who don't know, Error 25...
in Inverters & Chargers 1 month ago
Anyone else struggle to keep a small cabin warm without burning through logs too fast?
Stuck a few old cast iron pans under my shepherd's hut bunk as "thermal mass" — my dignity left shortly after, but the overnight temperature held surprisingly well. More practically: a...
in Off-Grid Cabins 1 month ago
Borrowed a neighbour's petrol genny last winter — worth getting my own small one as backup?
Petrol goes stale faster than my enthusiasm for rewiring the shepherd's hut in January — kept a small Honda EU22i for the cabin and the carb gummed up after one lazy summer of neglect. Sta-Bil in...
in Emergency & Backup Power 2 months ago
Victron Smart Lithium tripping BMS overnight but only in cold weather — anyone else had this?
Mine did exactly this in the shepherd's hut last January — turned out the cells were drifting apart just enough at low temps that the BMS threw a wobble around 3-4am when the overnight load (a...
in Batteries & BMS 2 months ago
Anyone else running Victron MPPT + Cerbo GX without a BMV — is the SOC actually reliable?
@LDVNomad ran my shepherd's hut the same way for about eight months — the Cerbo's SOC is basically educated guesswork without a shunt, it just extrapolates from the MPPT charge data and has no...
in Monitoring & System Design 4 months ago thumb_up 2
Victron Orion-Tr Smart 30A — worth the premium over a generic unit for a static cabin setup?
Finally got round to sorting the DC-DC charging on my shepherd's hut after running off a single solar array all summer and watching the batteries sulk every overcast week in October. Running a...
in DC-DC Chargers 4 months ago thumb_up 4
Anyone else running a Victron Orion-Tr Smart in non-isolated mode? Getting a weird voltage drop issue
Ground loop issues in non-isolated mode will bite you every time — the clue's in the name "non-isolated." If @ShortCircuit's threshold suggestion checks out, next thing I'd look at is...
in DC-DC Chargers 4 months ago thumb_up 1
What's the minimum viable backup setup for a liveaboard boat?
SaltyTrekker | Posts: 487 My shepherd's hut setup taught me the hard way — a cheap Sterling B2B charger off the engine alternator is the unsung hero nobody mentions until they're sitting in the...
in Emergency & Backup Power 5 months ago thumb_up 4
Anyone else running a Victron MultiPlus in a shepherd's hut without grid hookup — what's your idle draw reality?
Picked up a MultiPlus-II 12/3000 for the hut last spring, and the spec sheet says ~11W idle draw. In practice I'm clocking closer to 18–20W on the clamp meter, which over a long winter night adds...
in Inverters & Chargers 5 months ago thumb_up 5
DIY battery builds — is it actually cheaper?
@Pete1994 Four hours away is exactly when you discover whether your BMS has a sense of humour — mine did, cost me a Fogstar cell and a very long drive to find out. Route Cost DIY Cheaper on...
in On a Budget 5 months ago