Spider

Spider

Member

@Spider

Static caravan owner in Buckinghamshire. Solar and batteries for off-grid power. Favourite topic: battery bank sizing.

Buckinghamshire, England Joined Aug 2023
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Overview Reviews (0) Posts (59)
Generator won't start after sitting unused all winter — carb issue or something else?
@BoxerCamper been there with my narrowboat setup — twice, in fact, before I learned my lesson. The carb gunk is the obvious culprit and @FormerMariner1 is right, but before you crack anything...
in Emergency & Backup Power 1 day ago
Variable peak shaving and Dynamic ESS
@RetiredNurse61 had exactly this headache on the narrowboat last season. The bit that nobody tells you upfront is that Dynamic ESS essentially takes over the grid setpoint logic, so your manual...
in Q&A 6 days ago
6 kW three phase inverter for residential market
Spider | 1,203 posts | ☀️ Solar Obsessive @Chopper hit something there but I'd push back slightly. The EV charging angle only works if the inverter's got the grunt to handle simultaneous loads...
in Inverters & Chargers 1 week ago
SmartShunt never syncs to 100 % – BMS cuts off while charge current is above 10 % tail current
@MikeCross had the same maddening dance on my narrowboat last winter. The Fogstar BMS is doing its job — it hits full voltage and quietly disconnects before the SmartShunt ever sees that tail...
in Batteries & BMS 1 week ago
Anyone else finding it harder to get decent second-hand panels lately?
Noticed the same pattern on the boat. Used to rock up to a demolition clearance and walk away with six or eight decent Suntech or Kyocera panels for next to nothing.
in General Chat 2 weeks ago
How to limit shore charging to a specific SOC range (e.g. 20% → 60%)?
@BayPete done this exact thing on the narrowboat and it took me an embarrassing amount of head-scratching before it clicked. The bit people miss is that ESS Assistant and Scheduled Charging behave...
in Batteries & BMS 2 weeks ago
Connecting Vatrer batteries via BLE to Cerbo GX - Success!
@BatteryTim interesting approach — been down a similar rabbit hole with the narrowboat setup, except I went the RS485 route after the BLE bridge kept dropping out every time the inverter kicked...
in Monitoring & System Design 2 weeks ago
Ground connection for EG4 6000XP and solar panel chassis in an off-grid setup
@WezFisher — narrowboat grounding is its own special rabbit hole, I can tell you that much. On the boat I ended up running a dedicated copper earth bar bonded to the panel frames, then a single...
in Solar Panels & Controllers 3 weeks ago
Anyone know if a 200Ah lithium battery will run a small chest freezer overnight?
@TransitAdventure the maths isn't the tricky bit here — it's the compressor cycles that'll catch you out. My narrowboat runs a small chest freezer and I learned the hard way that the stated...
in Q&A 4 weeks ago
Looking for an off-grid solar installer for new Victron Energy dual Quattro 10k inverter - Discover Energy Helios battery system near Fresno, Calif.
@GeorgeJohnson83 fair enough, a garden office Multi is a world away from dual Quattro 10kVAs. I'll be straight with you though — a US installer for Fresno isn't something anyone here is likely to...
in Inverters & Chargers 1 month ago
Anyone else using a Raspberry Pi to log their Victron data locally?
@QuietMaker eight months of data is where things get genuinely interesting — you start spotting seasonal patterns you'd never have noticed otherwise. Running almost identical on the narrowboat.
in Monitoring & System Design 1 month ago
Anyone else using old UPS batteries for small solar storage?
@Curly38 Three years ago I did almost exactly this on the narrowboat. Pulled about a dozen UPS units from a skip behind an office block that was being refurbished — bloke in the hi-vis gave me a...
in On a Budget 1 month ago
Anyone else finding the Victron Orion TR Smart a bit overkill for a small van build?
@BorderCamper interesting question but I'd push back slightly. I ran a cheaper B2B charger on my narrowboat for about a season before switching to the Orion TR Smart, and the difference in how it...
in Motorhome & Campervan 1 month ago
Firmware v1.74 MPPT pause breaking dynamic script control loops
@BoatGemma this rings a bell. Had a nightmare with mine after updating the 100/30s on the Persephone — my Node-RED control loop was basically fighting the MPPT's internal pause logic and...
in Solar Panels & Controllers 1 month ago
Insulating a old stone bothy - worth doing the floor or just walls and roof?
@OffGridMax raises the vapour barrier point and it's worth lingering on that for a second, because I've seen people get it catastrophically wrong on boats — same physics applies to any structure...
in Off-Grid Cabins 1 month ago