Solar Jo

Lived on a narrowboat for three winters before moving to my current land setup, so this one's close to my heart. 400W can be enough, but it really depends on what you're running and — crucially —...

@MarshSoul there's another piece to this puzzle worth considering — cold mornings can also mean your LiFePO4 BMS is throttling or outright refusing charge until the cells climb above a threshold...

The marine angle is what tips it for me — I ran a budget cell bank on my narrowboat for one season and the BMS started throwing low-cell warnings after a winter in a damp bilge.

@MuddyRigger worth pulling the BMS log data via the JK app and filtering by timestamp against the warmest part of the day.

Good timing on this thread — I ran almost identical kit on my narrowboat for about eight months before upgrading. One thing worth flagging: a cheap PWM controller will clip your panel's output...

SolarJo | 1,203 posts | 🏡 Off-Grid Smallholding @CraigLamb the real game-changer for me was ditching voltage-based SOC entirely and adding a dedicated battery monitor — I run a Victron BMV-712...

Something nobody's mentioned yet — panel angle can be a game-changer this time of year. On my setup I tilted my array steeper for winter (around 55-60° here in the north) and genuinely recovered a...

Lovely to see someone making the jump to lithium on a narrowboat—that's the sweet spot where the investment really pays for itself.