I took notice of Guigsy when he posted about squeezing a 280 Fogstar into a Ducato seat base. But with quite a number of Fogstar BMS issues surfacing on the forum, I opted for a OPS 280 from Off Grid Power. Nigel is a true gent to deal with and the battery, being slightly smaller than the Fogstar 280, fits the seat base area like a dream, with room for a 1200 watt PSW inverter as well.
For the same price as a Fogstar 230 seat base battery, I have 50Ah more capacity. The only downside is there is no heating, but that is not an issue for me as the battery is not located in a cold outside locker. I also like the isolator system that comes as part of the OPS range - really handy when you are working on the electrics or just need to shut it down during extended storage.
My original AGM was located under the drivers seat along with the chargers, Votronic controller for the 280 w panel and a spaghetti junction of OEM cables. The empty space from removing the AGM provided lots of room to upgrade the B2B to a Votronic 50amp unit, the positive busbar etc and uprate all of the charging cables to 16mm2. I've retained the original Schaudt 25 amp B2B for redundancy, isolation is via the power supply and D+. Both are easily accessible and once I know the actual output of my alternator, I may reinstate it using an isolator switch, just incase there are occasions when 75 Amps heading to the OPS 280 may be useful.....
Autorouter gave me the idea to link the inverter into the existing 230v sockets using a relay. Another easy and worthwhile upgrade.
A lot of thinking and a couple of days of work has upgraded our van to a capable off - grid van, which is exactly what we wanted!
For the same price as a Fogstar 230 seat base battery, I have 50Ah more capacity. The only downside is there is no heating, but that is not an issue for me as the battery is not located in a cold outside locker. I also like the isolator system that comes as part of the OPS range - really handy when you are working on the electrics or just need to shut it down during extended storage.
My original AGM was located under the drivers seat along with the chargers, Votronic controller for the 280 w panel and a spaghetti junction of OEM cables. The empty space from removing the AGM provided lots of room to upgrade the B2B to a Votronic 50amp unit, the positive busbar etc and uprate all of the charging cables to 16mm2. I've retained the original Schaudt 25 amp B2B for redundancy, isolation is via the power supply and D+. Both are easily accessible and once I know the actual output of my alternator, I may reinstate it using an isolator switch, just incase there are occasions when 75 Amps heading to the OPS 280 may be useful.....
Autorouter gave me the idea to link the inverter into the existing 230v sockets using a relay. Another easy and worthwhile upgrade.
A lot of thinking and a couple of days of work has upgraded our van to a capable off - grid van, which is exactly what we wanted!
