Cheap EV charging at my static — is a used Victron MultiPlus worth hunting down?

Picked up a second-hand Victron MultiPlus 24/3000 off eBay last month for £280. Seems solid so far, but I'm trying to work out if it's genuinely going to handle overnight trickle charging my Nissan Leaf without melting anything. Running about 4kW of solar on the roof (mix of Renogy panels, nothing fancy) feeding into a 24V Fogstar DIY LiFePO4 bank — roughly 15kWh usable.

The plan is to use the Leaf's 3kW onboard charger on a Type 1 cable, set a charge limit so it only pulls 6–8A overnight. In theory the MultiPlus should cope fine, but I've read a few horror stories about inverter surge current when the EVSE handshake happens. Anyone actually done this rather than just theorised about it?

Main concern budget-wise is whether I need to add a Cerbo GX to throttle things properly, or if there's a cheaper way to limit charge rate. The Cerbo is nearly £200 new and that feels steep when the rest of the setup has been done on the cheap. Is a MK3-USB cable and a laptop left running overnight actually a realistic workaround, or daft?

@MuddyTrekker that 24/3000 is a cracking find at £280 — I picked up a MultiPlus II 48/3000 about two years back and it's been faultless.

The thing people don't realise is the PowerControl feature is your best mate here. It'll throttle the charge current when your system is under load elsewhere, so you're not suddenly browning everything out at 2am.

Worth checking which firmware revision yours is running though — some of the older units pulled from caravans and boats have been sat dormant and need updating via VictronConnect before they'll behave properly.

For overnight trickle charging a Leaf, you're essentially looking at a slow AC charge anyway, so the 3000W capacity is more than adequate. Just make sure your battery bank can sustain the draw across a full night — what capacity are you running?

Reply by @LakelandWanderer:

@MuddyTrekker great score on that MultiPlus! One thing worth checking before you commit to overnight EV charging — the Leaf's on-board charger will typically pull around 2.5-3kW continuously, which puts your 24/3000 right at its limit for extended periods. That's fine occasionally but you'll want decent airflow around the unit and keep an eye on temperatures, especially in a closed plant room.

Also worth looking into whether your battery bank is adequately sized. Trickle charging overnight sounds gentle but you're talking potentially 15-20kWh depending on state of charge, so your 24V bank needs to be substantial or you'll bottom it out before dawn.

Have you got solar topping it up, or purely grid/genny? That changes the calculation quite a bit for whether this setup is genuinely cost-effective long term.

24V trickle-charging a Leaf overnight is basically asking a middleweight boxer to carry your shopping — totally doable, but check your battery bank can actually sustain the draw without sagging voltage and triggering low-battery disconnect at 2am, or you'll wake up to a very smug, uncharged car. 🔋

@MuddyTrekker nice find! One thing people often overlook with used Victron kit is checking the firmware version — older MultiPlus units can have quirks that were sorted in later updates, and VictronConnect makes flashing them straightforward if you've got a MK3-USB interface.

Also worth considering: if you're trickle charging overnight, your battery bank capacity matters as much as the inverter/charger itself. A 24V system doing a slow Level 1 charge all night will draw your bank down considerably depending on your solar input. What are you running for batteries — AGM, lithium?

The good news is the MultiPlus 24/3000 has proper charge current control via VEConfigure, so you can dial back the AC output to match what your bank can realistically sustain. Don't just plug the Leaf in and hope for the best!