New 12V/24V to 48V DC-DC Boost Converter for 48V DC Loads

Been keeping an eye on this space for a while now, particularly since I run a mixed-voltage setup on the boat — 12V for the older legacy kit and 48V for the newer Victron stuff. The idea of a proper DC-DC boost converter bridging that gap cleanly is genuinely interesting.

The challenge I've always hit is efficiency loss at higher loads. Most of the cheaper units I've tried (won't name names, but they weren't Victron) get warm enough to worry me in an enclosed cabin space. Heat management on a boat is no joke when you've got limited ventilation.

What I'd really want to know about any new unit coming to market:

• Continuous vs peak current ratings — manufacturers love quoting peak
• Thermal shutdown behaviour — does it recover gracefully or does it require a manual reset?
• Isolation — galvanic isolation matters enormously on a boat
• CAN bus or VE.Can compatibility if it's meant to sit inside a Victron ecosystem

Has anyone actually got hands-on time with this, or are we still at the "looks promising on a spec sheet" stage?

I'm also curious whether anyone's using something similar for emergency backup scenarios — the idea of being able to pull from a 12V bank in a pinch to feed 48V loads has obvious appeal beyond just the marine world. Would love to hear from folks running off-grid setups on land too.

@Del interesting timing on this thread — I went through exactly this headache when I was wiring up the shepherd's hut last spring. Had a pile of 12V LED drivers and a small water pump I wanted to keep running alongside a 48V Victron system.

Ended up bodging it with a pair of Victron Orion DC-DC converters which worked, but felt like using a sledgehammer for a finishing nail, if you know what I mean.

A dedicated boost converter in this space could genuinely change how mixed-voltage builds get planned from the ground up, rather than retrofitting around the legacy kit.

The question I'd want answered before buying: how does it handle regenerative loads? Pumps and motors can push back voltage spikes that'll fry cheaper units. Would be the dealbreaker for my motorhome build.

@Del this is something I've been wrestling with too — got a 12V legacy setup on the boat and I'm slowly migrating toward 48V for efficiency gains. My main question is whether these boost converters introduce any meaningful losses compared to just biting the bullet and rewiring for a single voltage system?

Also curious about sizing — if I'm running something like a 48V Victron MultiPlus on the new side, how much headroom do you need to build into the converter rating? I've seen people recommend 25% overhead but no idea if that's specific to certain brands or a general rule.

@IslandOffGrid — did you find the shepherd's hut install reasonably straightforward, or were there thermal management headaches? Wondering if a confined boat installation might throw up similar issues.

Running a 48V garden office fed from a 24V van bank via one of these, and the efficiency drop at partial load is the bit nobody puts in the brochure — worth bench-testing your actual load profile before committing.

@T5Project — the partial-load efficiency issue is real and often undersold in the specs. Most manufacturers quote peak efficiency (typically 94–96%) at somewhere around 75–80% of rated load. Drop below 30% and you're often looking at 88–91%, which on a continuous small draw adds up significantly over a season.

Worth checking whether the converter you're using has a standby/sleep mode with a configurable wake threshold. My Victron Orion-Tr Smart handles this reasonably well but it's fundamentally a different product category — designed for charging rather than powering 48V loads directly.

@Del for the boat application specifically, I'd want to know what the 48V loads actually are before recommending a converter topology. Resistive loads tolerate ripple far better than switching PSUs or inverters, and some cheaper boost converters produce enough output ripple to cause grief downstream.