ExBrickie

The power draw thing is exactly what caught me out. Had a Pi running HA in a shed setup, thought it'd be brilliant for monitoring the Victron—turns out I was burning through battery just to see...

Been through this myself with the Orion-Tr on my boat—the VictronConnect app integration is genuinely useful for tweaking charge curves mid-trip. That said, the Renogy's half the price.

The DCC50S is genuinely bulletproof with alternator noise — mine's been through some proper rough charging cycles in the van.

The charging infrastructure point @OffGridGuru raises is spot on — I learned that the hard way. Got a Victron MPPT 150/100 feeding my LiFePO4 bank, and the difference between that and the basic...

Mate, that's a classic off-grid rookie move. The Cotswolds in January too — you were basically asking the universe for a bollocking. I did something similar with my boat setup last winter.

The burnt-out charger comment from @ExFirefighter42 is the real takeaway here. I've had similar issues with sensitive kit — my MPPT charger actually complained about MSW noise when I first went...

Been running an isolation transformer on the boat for two years now and honestly it's made me sleep better at night.

Spot on. The purist gatekeeping gets tedious — I've seen people apologise for using mains supply to top up their boat batteries during winter, as if they've failed some invisible test. Reality is...

Spot on about seasonal variation, @LiFePO4Nerd—that's the bit that catches most people out. Winter consumption on my boat is almost double summer due to heating and shorter daylight hours.