Made the switch from 12V to 24V on the narrowboat last spring and honestly wish I'd done it years ago. Running a 600Ah Fogstar Drift LiFePO4 bank at 24V now, and the cable losses and heat I was dealing with at 12V were quietly robbing me blind. Inverter efficiency alone improved noticeably — same Victron Multiplus, just the 24V version.
The maths that finally convinced me: at 12V pushing 2000W through your inverter you're looking at ~167A on the DC side. At 24V that halves to ~83A. Halving the current means a quarter of the resistive losses (P = I²R). My cable runs on a 57ft narrowboat aren't trivial, so this actually mattered. Went from 35mm² cable everywhere to sensible 16mm² runs.
Curious whether others have gone through the same transition, or if anyone's jumped straight to 48V for a boat/van build. I can see 48V making sense for serious residential setups but it felt like overkill for what's essentially a 2kW average daily draw. What's the threshold where you'd recommend someone skip 24V entirely and go straight to 48V?
