Installation – a short saga

After I dragged the 140-kilo monolith into the Shed of Chaos and stood there steaming like a busted kettle. My wife handed me tea; my brain cooled enough to read. Page two of the spec sheet winked: “At least six people must assist with lifting.” I laughed, then my back filed a formal complaint. Read first; rupture later.

Next came the manual. Final page, miniature font, maximum cheek: a Type-B Victron BMS-to-BMS CAN cable required. Amazon wanted £18 for a sanctified RJ45. Classic Victron toll-booth. Fine. I pulled the pinout, grabbed the crimp tool from the plastic shed, and ten minutes later birthed a 3-metre, £1.25 lead that clicked into place with the smugness of a home-made hack that works first time.

Then the mains-off interlude. I yelled upstairs to the wife mid-shower “Mind if I turn the Power off?” Permission sailed back without the crucial footnote that the shower is electric. Breakers dropped. Three beats. The household banshee announced itself on cue while I checked continuity and tried not to grin and laugh to loud.

I bolted back to the shed with the contraband RJ45 and a laptop, ready to slide the battery under the bench until tape measure reality landed: four inches too tall. Another entry in the ongoing ledger titled Things I Would Have Known If I’d Read First. I shuffled benches and boxes, carved a new berth, and rolled the Fogstar into its throne.

Fogstar’s own heavy cables went on and saved me about £50 “thank you guys” then the ritual: torque, double-check, breathe. Twenty minutes later the stage was set. House breakers up. Silver button pressed. The 4.5″ touch screen blinked awake: 35% state of charge. Into the menus; CAN-bus; inverter protocol to Victron. An unnecessary, traditional IT power-cycle, then the battery DC breaker to ON. The Multiplus 5000 VA hummed alive. Cerbo GX V2 lit the dashboards like mission control.

Handshake on the first try. Victron read 35% SOC. I loaded the proper profiles, bounced the system twice, and watched the data settle: accurate SOC, per-cell status scrolling neatly, active balancing marching across the lines, SOH reported, telemetry everywhere and more signal than I could reasonably wag a stick at.

The sun did its bit. Warm sky, panels whispering current, the pack rose through the afternoon with enough to prove the loop was alive. Night fell; the cheap window opened. 22:30, off-peak £0.07/kWh. I pushed a 4.2 kW mains charge and sat with the numbers like an insomniac at a campfire. Up it climbed to 100%, then floated, calm and steady. Home Assistant filled with entities and graphs; Victron and Fogstar agreed without drama.

Final tally on the screen: 17.8 kWh at full. Refresh. Still 17.8. Out to the shed for the old-school confirmation glow from plastic and glass confirmed. Fogstar didn’t just clear the fence; it went full Kal-El and deposited the ball somewhere on the dark side of the moon.