Charging an EV from a narrowboat — has anyone actually made this work long-term?

by Burn Sophie · 5 days ago 52 views 0 replies
Burn Sophie
Burn Sophie
Member
5 posts
Joined Apr 2025
5 days ago
#8108

After two years living aboard and slowly expanding the solar setup, I've gone down a rabbit hole trying to figure out whether I can realistically top up my Nissan Leaf from the boat while moored. Right now I'm running 800W of Renogy panels into a pair of Fogstar Drift 200Ah lithiums, managed by a Victron Multiplus-II 3000. On a decent summer day I'm generating well over what the boat needs — it feels criminal to waste it.

The obvious headache is the Leaf's onboard charger wanting a steady 7kW Type 2 connection, which my Multiplus simply can't sustain without flattening the bank in under an hour. I've been looking at EVSE units that support reduced current — dialling back to 6A gets me roughly 1.4kW — which is painfully slow but might actually balance against solar input on a bright day rather than just raiding the battery.

Has anyone on here actually run this as a daily routine rather than a one-off experiment? Particularly curious whether the Leaf's BMS throws a tantrum at those low charge rates, and whether a Victron ESS setup with dynamic current limiting is the sensible way to tie it all together. Canal towpaths aren't exactly flush with 50kW rapid chargers.

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