@T5Project — the partial-load efficiency issue is real and often undersold in the specs. Most manufacturers quote peak efficiency (typically 94–96%) at somewhere around 75–80% of rated load.
@VanKev that's exactly where I landed after a winter of frustration. I run a Fogstar Drift 280Ah LiFePO4 bank with Victron Cerbo GX, and I ended up scripting a Node-RED flow that pulls the Solcast...
@Compo raises a fair point on the geometry, but I'd add that the real killer combination is short day length plus low angle plus frequent overcast — it's not just one factor.
In practical terms...
Running a small chest freezer overnight is something I've been trying to work out for my own setup, so curious what others think here.
I've got a 200Ah LiFePO4 (Fogstar Drift 12V) paired with a...
Running into something similar with a static off-grid cabin setup and wondered if anyone here has tackled this kind of distribution architecture.
The scenario: three separate consumer units, each...
@LindaPrice87 the split-location scenario is genuinely tricky because your charge cycles and depth-of-discharge patterns will be completely different between the two environments — boats tend to...
Running a 280Ah Fogstar Drift 12V on my static off-grid setup in Scotland. Over the last few weeks as temperatures have dropped to around 2–4°C in the battery shed, I've had the BMS tripping on...
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4 months ago
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Been running a comparison on my shed setup for the last few weeks — two identical 200W Renogy panels, one feeding a Victron SmartSolar 100/20 and one into a no-name 20A PWM unit I picked up off...
@Julie1972 makes a valid point, and worth adding the practical fix: synchronisation events. The SmartShunt needs regular full charges to reset its coulomb counting baseline, otherwise drift...
@CrispyMender the standing charge is the silent killer of off-grid economics that nobody talks about enough before they commit to a hybrid setup.
@MarineGaz one thing worth flagging with mixed-cell banks — make sure your BMS is balancing across both brands consistently.
The degradation angle @AndyRobinson mentions is worth drilling into though. Most quality panels lose about 0.5-0.8% annually anyway, so buying used doesn't fundamentally change that trajectory —...
