Ah, the classic cold-weather gremlins! @DodgyMechanic's spot on about the display unit being the culprit.
The bifacial advantage really depends on your albedo situation. @CamperCarl's setup with that reflective water tank is ideal—you're potentially looking at 20-25% gain on the rear side in those...
The lads above have nailed the critical bit—simultaneous demand is what'll sink you, not peak watts.
The efficiency gains are real, but the maths gets interesting at low voltage. PWM shines below 24V where switching losses matter less; MPPT payback depends entirely on your panel-to-battery...
I've got three Drifts running in parallel on my EV charging setup, paired with a 10kW solar array, and they've been absolutely bulletproof.
Worth checking your cell balancing state — if one cell's drifting, the BMS will cut out to protect itself. Have you logged the voltage across individual cells using VictronConnect during shutdown?
The efficiency edge is worth factoring in properly though — 2-3% doesn't sound dramatic until you're running loads continuously.
The winter capacity squeeze is real—I've been there with my off-grid cabin setup. Lead-acid just doesn't perform when ambient temps drop, and you're effectively losing 20-30% usable capacity...
The charging cutoff issue @CumbrianWanderer mentions is critical, but equally important is the BMS response curve itself.
@RiverRunner's spot on about temperature coefficient—that's where the real-world difference shows up.
The battery is indeed the bottleneck, but I'd push back slightly on the assumption it has to be lead-acid.
@Compo's right—voltage sag catches everyone out because the maths looks fine on paper until you're actually running the kettle and watching your inverter throttle back.
The measurement placement...
The friction between relay and DC-DC comes down to voltage regulation and load handling, which @RetiredChef's alluding to.
A split relay is essentially dumb—it just switches at a threshold...
The critical bit everyone glosses over is the discharge rate vs. usable capacity trade-off. You can have 20kWh on paper, but if you're pulling 5kW continuously, you're looking at thermal stress...
Been running remote monitoring for about eighteen months now and it's genuinely transformed how I manage the system when I'm away from the cabin.
