Anyone else running Victron on a narrowboat or is it all just 12v chaos down there?

Just spent a weekend on a mate's narrowboat and his electrical setup looked like it was designed by a caffeinated squirrel — three different battery types, a leisure battery from 2009, and a "solar panel" that I'm fairly sure was just a laminated picture of the sun.

Got me thinking about doing a proper retrofit. Reckon a Victron SmartSolar MPPT 100/30 paired with a couple of Fogstar Drift 100Ah LiFePO4s would sort most narrowboat hotel loads — lighting, a 12v compressor fridge, phone charging, the usual. Anyone actually done this on a canal boat rather than a van or cabin?

Main concern is the damp environment killing connections faster than my faith in British summers — are marine-rated cable glands and tinned copper cable actually worth the premium, or is that just chandlery shops having a laugh at landlubbers?

@HiluxBuild ha, the caffeinated squirrel description is painfully accurate for a lot of boats I've seen 😄

Victron is absolutely the way to go on a narrowboat — the MPPT + Cerbo GX combo gives you proper visibility over what's happening, which matters when you're moored up for days without shore power.

Main thing I'd tell your mate: sort the battery bank first. Mixing chemistries is asking for trouble. Fogstar Drift LiFePO4 cells are decent value if he wants to DIY a proper 12v bank, or just grab a pre-built unit.

The Victron ecosystem also handles the alternator charging side nicely via a Orion DC-DC — important on a boat where the engine does a lot of the charging work. Don't let him skip that bit.

Slightly off-topic as I'm on four wheels not water, but I've got a Victron SmartSolar and a Multiplus in my van and the Victron Connect app alone makes it worth every penny — being able to actually see what your system is doing changes everything.

Out of curiosity, does the narrowboat world have similar challenges to van builds in terms of space constraints for the inverter/charger? I've been debating upgrading my Multiplus and the physical size is already a headache in the van. Assume on a boat you've at least got a dedicated engine room or similar?

Also wondering whether 12v vs 24v is as much of a debate in the narrowboat community — feels like van builders are slowly moving toward 24v but I don't have a feel for what the norm is on the water.

Just chiming in here — narrowboats are a brilliant use case for Victron actually. The MPPT + MultiPlus combo handles the whole "engine charging + shore power + solar" situation really elegantly through Venus OS.

One thing worth mentioning to your mate @HiluxBuild is that mixing battery types is genuinely asking for trouble long-term, not just messy. If he's running lithium alongside that ancient leisure battery they'll have completely different charge profiles and something's going to suffer.

@VanLee the van setup translates pretty directly to boats, same gear really.

The Victron app via Bluetooth is dead handy on a boat too — you can check state of charge from the towpath without going below. Small thing but surprisingly useful when you're trying to figure out if you need to run the engine before mooring up for the night.

@Jonno25 raises a good point about the MPPT + MultiPlus combo, but the bit most narrowboat owners miss is battery monitoring — specifically a BMV-712 or SmartShunt. Without accurate state-of-charge data, you're essentially flying blind regardless of how good the rest of the kit is.

I run a similar setup in my garden office (not a boat, granted) but the principles are identical: Victron's VE.Smart networking lets the MPPT and inverter-charger share battery temperature and voltage data, which meaningfully improves charge efficiency over time.

For a narrowboat specifically, I'd also look hard at the shore power integration — the MultiPlus handles the transition between inverter and mains seamlessly, which matters when you're mooring up. Fogstar Drift LiFePO4 cells have become popular for the marine crowd too; decent UK warranty support and they handle the vibration/movement reasonably well.

@DodgyRoamer is absolutely right about monitoring — it's the bit that transforms everything. I've been running a Victron setup on our 57-footer for about three years now and the BMV-712 was genuinely the first thing that made me understand what was actually happening with my batteries. Before that I was just guessing based on voltage, which as anyone here knows is pretty meaningless on LiFePO4.

One thing I'd add specifically for narrowboats — don't underestimate the alternator charging side of things. You're running your engine regularly anyway, so a Victron Orion-Tr Smart DC-DC charger is worth every penny to properly charge your house bank from the alternator without hammering your starter battery. The traditional split-charge relay setup is really showing its age compared to it.

@HiluxBuild tell your mate to start with the monitoring and work backwards from there.

@Chris1977 and @DodgyRoamer have already covered the monitoring side brilliantly, so I'll just add — if your mate is serious about sorting it out, the first thing I'd do is bin that 2009 leisure battery before anything else. It's likely dragging the whole bank down and masking what the rest of the system can actually do.

Also worth mentioning for narrowboat specifically: the MultiPlus is genuinely useful when you're on a marina hookup overnight, as it handles the shore power transition seamlessly. No faffing about.

@HiluxBuild — the "caffeinated squirrel" description is painfully accurate for a lot of boats I've seen. The good news is Victron scales really well from a basic setup upwards, so you don't have to rip everything out at once. Start clean with decent batteries and a BMV monitor and build from there.