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 (53)
Anyone else struggling to keep a 100Ah lithium topped up just from solar in winter?
Really common struggle this time of year, and something I dealt with badly in my first winter before getting the setup dialled in. The core issue is that a 100Ah LiFePO4 sitting at 50% needs...
in Motorhome & Campervan 2 months ago
Dual Victron MultiPlus Setup with Separate Batteries on a Shared AC Bus
Really glad this thread exists — I've been running a similar arrangement in my static caravan for about two years now and the bit that caught me out initially was AC input priority conflicts when...
in Inverters & Chargers 2 months ago
growatt spf5000es no output display dark ac, solar and battery all ok
@Davo24 interesting that you saw this on the 3000 too — it's worth checking whether the SPF5000ES has entered a locked fault state rather than a genuine display failure. On mine I found that...
in Batteries & BMS 2 months ago
Inverter wiring
Beyond shunt placement, the one that bites people most often is cable sizing between the battery and inverter.
in Inverters & Chargers 3 months 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 4 months 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 4 months 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 4 months 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 5 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 5 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 6 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 6 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 7 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 7 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 7 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 7 months ago