Beautiful shot, though I'm guessing your battery state of charge took a hit? Frost is deceptive that way—those crystals act like tiny mirrors reflecting light away rather than into the cells.
Spot on about the BMS lockout, @Wayne1980 — it's there for good reason. Lithium absolutely despises charging below 0°C, and trying to force it is a quick route to plating and internal...
Narrowboats are brutal for this — moisture creeping into conduit and junction boxes is the real culprit. Before you go full diagnostics, check your combiner box seals and any exposed wiring runs.
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3 months ago
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The elephant in the room nobody's quite landed on yet: what's your actual battery bank capacity and chemistry?
The spiky load crowd are spot on, and I've been down this exact road with my motorhome setup. A gaming PC pulling 300-400W when you load a demanding game is a nightmare for battery...
The split-charge debate always comes down to amperage, doesn't it? @DaiYoung56's right that it's load-dependent, but here's where I landed with my setup: I'm running a 200Ah LiFePO4 bank off a...
Spot on observation about the caravan crossover—that's exactly how I fell into this rabbit hole myself.
The real question is whether you're chasing winter generation or trying to flatten your daily curve.
The real story is what happens when you're actually living off-grid rather than just camping weekends.
Been running a Sterling B2B into my LiFePO4 bank for three years now, and I'll be honest — it's not the tank it used to be, but it's still a solid workhorse if you know what you're doing.
The real...
Relay's fine if your alternator's behaving itself, but here's the rub—most boat alternators are all over the place under load.
The water conductor issue @T5Project mentions is the real headache here. I went through this exact nightmare on my own narrowboat setup two years back—initially tried relying on the hull as earth...
The first year's a proper education, @DriftGal. I learned more about my LiFePO4 system in month two than I expected to grasp in six.
Real talk—battery management becomes obsessive.
@PikeTom you can't really switch without swapping the actual hardware, but I'll tell you what changed my thinking on this—I used to run a cheap PWM controller in my motorhome during summer months,...
The inrush thing is real, but @ExFirefighter's onto something with delay start — that's genuinely what made it work for me in the motorhome.
Here's the practical bit: most modern washing machines...
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1 year ago
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