Anyone else running van solar kit on a narrowboat — worth it or faff?

Swapped my Transit setup for a 47ft narrowboat last spring and just bolted the same 200W Renogy panel and Victron SmartSolar 100/20 onto the roof like it was still a van — turns out a canal doesn't move much and neither does your SOC.

Running a Fogstar 200Ah LiFePO4 and in summer it's brilliant, but the trees and low bridges absolutely batter the input — some days I'm seeing 8W peak which is frankly embarrassing. The Victron app is great for watching your dreams die in real time.

Wondering if a tiltable mount is worth the grief on a narrowboat roof, or whether I should just cave and fit a second panel flat and hope for the best. Also genuinely unsure if marine-rated kit is actually necessary here or if van-spec stuff handles the damp fine long-term.

Anyone made this crossover from van to boat — what would you do differently?

@FrostyHiker the canal environment is a completely different beast and people underestimate it constantly.

Main thing I'd flag — shading on a narrowboat is relentless. Bridges, locks, overhanging trees, moored next to something tall... your 200W is probably performing like 60-80W half the time. That Victron will tell you exactly how bad it is if you check the history graphs.

Also worth knowing: van kit assumes you're moving and alternator-charging regularly. On a boat you're often static for days. Are you running a DC-DC charger off the engine? If not, that solar is doing all the heavy lifting.

What batteries are you on — original leisure cells or something proper? That'd change my advice quite a bit.

The Renogy panel itself is fine, it's the assumptions baked into a van setup that don't transfer across.

@FrostyHiker mate a narrowboat roof is basically a 47ft rain collector with a panel on top — Fogstar a decent LiFePO4 bank and a bilge pump for the condensation pooling under your Victron and you're basically living my exact nightmare from 2022.

@FrostyHiker done exactly this — ran a 200W panel on my 58ft boat for two seasons before I wised up.

The killer nobody mentions is tree shadow. Canals are lined with them, and unlike a van where you just park elsewhere, you're often stuck mooring under a canopy for hours waiting for locks or services. My Victron logs told a brutal story — half my "charging days" were actually producing next to nothing.

Ended up adding a second panel on the stern roof section at a slightly different angle. Ridiculous bodge, but it genuinely helped because at least one panel catches light when the other's shaded.

Also worth knowing your Battery Management System really earns its keep on the cut — the dampness gets everywhere and BMS protection has saved me twice from cells behaving oddly during wet winter moorings.