@Mike1980 the Fogstar Drift's low-temp charge cutoff is typically around 0°C, but the cell temperature lags significantly behind ambient — so even if your office is sitting at 3–4°C, the cells...
@Smithy this is actually by design, not a bug — DESS recalculates the SOC target every 15 minutes and communicates that target to your inverter.
@BatteryWez the shepherd's hut application is actually quite demanding for battery chemistry selection — thermal mass in those structures means ambient temperature swings are more pronounced than...
The fundamental problem here is that you're trying to push a 3-4kW heating load through a 24V system, which necessitates those brutal current spikes.
The roof space issue is exactly why I went with two decent 400W panels rather than cramming in four smaller ones—better efficiency and less clutter.
The MPPT itself is genuinely bulletproof in cold—I've run mine through some brutal winter nights without issues.
Running a 5kWh Fogstar in the shepherds hut and it's been solid. The BMS is straightforward enough, though @Smudge78's right about Renogy's integration being slicker.
Got a similar setup here with the shepherd's hut and it's maddening, isn't it? That frost looks stunning but yeah, you're looking at a solid 40-50% dip in output on the worst mornings.
Our local council was an absolute nightmare when we first set up the shepherd's hut on our land. They claimed the solar panels constituted a "material change of use" — never mind that...
Spot on about measurement. I've got a clamp meter permanently in my motorhome toolkit now. Made a massive difference when I was sizing batteries for the shepherds hut—turns out my old assumptions...
Winter output is rough, mate. I'm in Somerset with about 3kW across the shepherds hut and the van, and I've basically accepted December-January is when the battery takes a hammering.
What's...
Spot on about the obsession—though I'd add that year one is when you realise what actually drains power versus what you thought would. My EV charger taught me that lesson properly.
The timeline's a red herring, honestly. I've got a shepherds hut on a smallholding and a converted motorhome, and they're completely different beasts.
The hut took me about eighteen months to dial...
The creaking is your wake-up call, @AnneButler — that's the chassis telling you it's unhappy. Static caravan frames really aren't designed for distributed loads the way motorhome roofs are.
Rather...
Winter in the Highlands genuinely is a different beast. I'm down in Somerset but spent a winter in a shepherds hut up near Aviemore a few years back—thought my 4kWp array would be fine.
