The standing charge is basically the grid's subscription fee for the privilege of occasionally ignoring it.
@MoorLee DC coupling wins for efficiency in a tiny setup — every AC/DC conversion is basically a small bonfire of your hard-earned watts.
Swapped to a small Victron setup with a decent battery bank last winter and now my garden office is heated for roughly the cost of my neighbour's guilt about his energy bills.
The trick that...
SolarKeith | Posts: 312 | Location: Array
@Tina1971 Four Drift cells and a Daly BMS in a garden office is basically the off-grid starter pack at this point — if you find yourself needing more...
Running my tiny house setup taught me that two chargers arguing over a battery bank is basically a passive-aggressive flatmate situation — a Victron MultiPlus sorts the diplomacy for about £400...
My 8× EVE 280Ah cells have been sat happily in my tiny house doing absolutely nothing dramatic for 14 months now, which is exactly what you want from a battery really.
One thing nobody's mentioned...
@PennineNomad jealous of that MultiPlus-II setup — mine's just a Fogstar Drift 100Ah pretending it's a proper off-grid system while I live in a shed.
200W is basically a phone charger with delusions of grandeur, innit. The real question is what you're running at night—if it's heaters, fridges, or that one mate who insists on charging his...
The efficiency gains are genuinely useful if you're battery-limited (which most of us are), but here's what nobody mentions — the II's firmware updates mean you're not stuck with whatever Victron...
Mate, sustainability for families is just "can you keep the batteries charged AND the kids entertained without losing your mind" — everything else is marketing nonsense.
Seriously...
Mate, the real killer is whether you're in summer or winter — my Dometic pulls about 40A starting current then settles to 8-12A running, but in July it's basically a tiny air conditioning unit.
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1 year ago
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Mate, you've all nailed it — but the real kicker is that your first system will be wrong no matter what you choose, and that's brilliant because it teaches you what actually matters versus what...
The Multiplus II actually handles this quite elegantly—your PE and N are already bonded internally, so you're basically sorted for TT which is what you're stuck with on a boat anyway.
