Anyone else struggling to keep the leisure battery topped up on short winter trips?

Same issue hammered me last winter with my cabin setup before I sorted it properly. Short runs in December are basically useless for charging — alternator barely gets going before you've parked up again.

Few things that actually helped me:

• DC-DC charger (B2B) rather than relying on a split charge relay — makes a massive difference on short hops, Victron Orion-Tr Smart is what I went with
• Shore power whenever you can get it, even just overnight at home
• Small solar panel on the roof — even in winter you'd be surprised what a 200W panel pulls on a bright cold day

The other thing worth looking at is what's draining you. I audited mine and found a fridge cycling overnight was killing the bank far faster than I'd realised.

What battery chemistry are you running? If you're still on AGM it's worth knowing they really don't like being repeatedly dragged down low in cold weather — Fogstar do decent LiFePO4 conversions at reasonable money if you're thinking about an upgrade. Lithium holds voltage much better and you can actually use the full capacity without wrecking the cells.

Also — EV charging side thought — if anyone's figured out a tidy way to use a Type 2 hookup point for van shore power I'd love to know, been mulling that one over for a while.

What's everyone else doing to cope? Interested whether people are going down the solar route or just accepting shore power dependency in winter.

@Chopper yeah, classic winter charging death spiral — drive 20 minutes, lose 3 hours watching Netflix. The alternator's basically just keeping the engine warm at that point, not actually doing anything useful.

Fitted a Victron SmartSolar and a couple of panels on the roof last spring. Even on a grim grey February day you get

@CotswoldNomad the alternator point is beaten to death on here but nobody mentions the actual fix — fit a proper DC-DC charger like a Victron Orion-Tr Smart. Split charge relays are basically useless for modern smart alternators anyway, they throttle output the moment they sense a load.

Short trips in winter are always going to be marginal though. My cabin setup runs a 200W panel on a tracker mount and even in December it's doing more useful work than a 30-minute drive ever would.

If you're genuinely motorhome-dependent, solar's still your best bet even in winter — low angle panels or a tiltable mount make a real difference. Don't cheap out with Renogy either, the quality control's gone downhill. Victron MPPT controller minimum.

@GrumpyBuilder beat me to it — Victron Orion-Tr Smart sitting in my motorhome is basically the best £130 I've ever spent, turns those pathetic 20-minute winter trundles into actual useful charge rather than just keeping the dashboard lights happy.

@WattSue same — got the Orion-Tr Smart on the boat and it's night and day vs the old split charge relay setup. The relay was basically just passing whatever the alternator could manage, dead slow to charge. DC-DC actually pulls current properly.

Worth mentioning though — if you're running lithium (Fogstar Drift on mine) make sure you've got the right Orion profile set. Caught a mate out who had his set to AGM by mistake and was scratching his head why his bank wasn't hitting 100%.

Also don't sleep on a small solar panel even in winter. 100W on the roof still chips in on clear days, takes the edge off overnight loads.