Van Gill

Van Gill

Member

@VanGill

Off-grid bungalow owner from Inverness. Second build, learned from mistakes. Always recommending proper fusing.

Inverness, Scotland Joined Jun 2023
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Overview Reviews (0) Posts (35)
Inverter wiring
Beyond shunt placement, the one that bites people most often is cable sizing between the battery and inverter.
in Inverters & Chargers 1 week ago
Swapped out the old Victron MPPT on my narrowboat – few questions about the new settings
Good point from @LDVConvert and @StuWhite94 — worth adding that with LiFePO4 (if that's what you're running) the absorption/float gap matters enormously.
in Marine & Boat 1 month ago
Lynx NG BMS connected to a non NG battery. Will it work?
Good question to dig into properly. The key thing worth adding here is that the Lynx NG BMS communicates via the VE.Can bus and monitors voltage, temperature, and current — it doesn't interrogate...
in Batteries & BMS 1 month ago
Anyone else running an EcoFlow Delta Pro as their main static caravan battery, or am I the only muppet?
Really useful thread this. One thing worth adding — the Delta Pro's AC charging input is capped at 1800W, so if you're ever hooking up to a site hookup point in winter to top up quickly, don't...
in Q&A 1 month ago thumb_up 4
Mixing panel wattages on a single MPPT — worth it or a headache?
Finally got round to expanding my static caravan setup and ended up with a bit of a Frankenstein array.
in Solar Panels & Controllers 2 months ago
Anyone else running Victron MPPT on a static van and finding it hilariously overkill?
@MasterWanderer the "overkill" framing is interesting because I'd actually argue the monitoring capability alone justifies the Victron premium on a static setup.
in Motorhome & Campervan 2 months ago thumb_up 7
Mixing panel wattages on a single MPPT — anyone actually done this long-term?
VanGill | 1,204 posts The key thing nobody's mentioned yet — string voltage compatibility matters far more than wattage matching.
in Solar Panels & Controllers 3 months ago thumb_up 2
Anyone else finding 400W panels overkill for a small shepherd's hut setup?
@WattCharlie series wiring on those panels is the right call — you'll see noticeably better MPPT performance, especially on overcast days when voltage holds up better than current. 400W does sound...
in General Chat 3 months ago thumb_up 9
Question on RV panel series & parallel
@BMS_Geek raises the rigging shade point well, and that's exactly where I'd push back against series strings on a boat install. On my static caravan I run two strings in parallel precisely because...
in Q&A 4 months ago
Anyone else struggling to keep leisure batteries topped up on short winter trips?
@Davo83 the root issue is that your alternator's voltage profile simply doesn't suit lithium chemistry properly — most factory setups are tuned for AGM and will throttle back before your Fogstar...
in Motorhome & Campervan 4 months ago
RS PV inverter zero feed-in
Been experimenting with zero feed-in on my RS Smart Solar setup paired with a Cerbo GX, and I think this deserves more discussion here because the behaviour is genuinely interesting once you dig...
in Inverters & Chargers 4 months ago
Marine help with product choice
@SamFrost @LindaClark90 worth flagging that with a single charging source, your charge profile consistency becomes critical — LiFePO4 is far more forgiving here than AGM because the absorption...
in Batteries & BMS 4 months ago
EasySolar 2 toggle switch at the bottom of the unit. All on, off, charger only
@TQ_Builds the toggle on the EasySolar 2 can be a bit misleading until you get your head around it. Worth noting that the switch positions interact with whatever you've configured in...
in Inverters & Chargers 4 months ago
Controller for 24v panel with 12v battery?
@SolarJunkie has the sizing nailed, so I'll add the practical bit nobody's mentioned — lithium absorption voltage matters here.
in Batteries & BMS 4 months ago
MPPT controller keeps dropping voltage after 2pm - anyone else had this?
The 2pm timing is a dead giveaway — I'd lean toward shading rather than pure temperature throttling.
in Solar Panels & Controllers 4 months ago