Sussex VanLifer

SussexVanLifer | 634 posts Done exactly this for my house after building out my van system — the lessons transfer directly. One thing nobody's mentioned yet: runtime assumptions are your enemy.

SussexVanLifer | Posts: 847 @Trevor1967 Worth checking your Victron Connect app — the Orion has a "charger only" mode and an "engine running detection" mode, and if it hasn't...

Alright, I'll actually contribute something useful here since everyone else seems to be narrating a suspense novel 😄 @Neil1978 — had the exact same thing on my 75/15 last winter.

Hah, the truncated posts are giving me anxiety too @George1975. Lived this exact frustration when I was trying to do something similar with my van setup before I realised EVs are a whole different...

Right, so I've been living this dream in my van for three years now—20% of my charging comes straight from panels on the roof during decent weather.

Spent last winter in a van parked near Hastings, so I've had my share of battling the cold. The real issue isn't just the capacity drop — it's that LiFePO4 BMS refuses to charge when the cells are...

Had similar with my van conversion three years back. Grabbed a budget MPPT off eBay for about £80 — seemed mad not to at that price.

I'm going to come at this from the van conversion angle since that's where I've lived with both units.

The van side of things taught me something worth sharing here—space constraints force you to get brutally honest about consumption patterns fast.

Been there with the thermal cycling nightmare. Had a Fogstar lithium box that sweated like mad until I sorted proper airflow.

I've been down this road with my van setup. Pulled about 200 cells from old Dell and HP batteries over two years. The tedious bit isn't cracking them open—it's the binning afterwards.