Renogy is not the problem

Disclaimer: I am not a Renogy fanboy or booster. I do not own any Renogy gear as of this writing.

TL:DR

• Unless you are trolling for the absolute cheapest gear¹ the solar and power components vanfolk buy will work to specs.
• if you know what you are doing you can meet requirements with little money or a lot of money; your choice
• vanfolk need to read and understand those specs (and what they actually need) before purchase

Renogy is not the problem

Renogy products are fine. They are in the low-to-middle range of the market and are sufficient for the needs of the average vandweller.

so why all the hate?

newbies

1. Newbies don’t read/understand specs and so do not understand why one component would cost more than another
2. so they gravitate toward the lower-priced gear
3. but are reassured by branding and marketing
4. … hence Renogy

When things go “wrong” (actual or perceived) they don’t have the conceptual understanding or troubleshooting skills to figure out what (if anything) has gone awry.

1. newbies contact Renogy support for help
2. Renogy’s low-cost price structure does not permit excessive hand-holding
3. “Renogy support is crAp!!!”

anti-Chinese

There is a subset of posters who have deeper-seated issues with the Chinese. If you read their post history you will often find their xenophobic comments are not limited to van-related subreddits.

victron zealots

Victron makes nice stuff; I have a Victron 150/45 MPPT that runs my main array nicely with few annoyances.² I run my portables off a 75/15. Somehow I avoided induction into the cult of Light Blue Brainworms that causes owners to become tiresome loyalists. Some of them could replace their forum/reddit accounts with bots that post get a Victron! and no one would notice any difference.

I suspect post-purchase rationalization is at play here. As one marketing agency put it:

Post-purchase rationalisation is a cognitive bias whereby someone who purchases a product or service that is particularly expensive or doesn’t perform in line with its value, overlooks any faults or defects in order to justify their purchase… if a person chooses option A instead of option B, they are likely to ignore or downplay the faults of option A while amplifying or subscribing new, negative faults to option B.

Example: “Get a victron…. Other brands you will have to run another wire and find an accessory wire to splice into.” <- factually incorrect, but the person had just installed their own Victron Orion.

Renogy as designated scapegoat

Renogy is a favorite whipping horse of the vanlife community for the reasons above and for reasons I cannot fathom. The gear works to spec.

To paraphrase the famous quip about historians, “Renogy hate tells you more about the hater than about Renogy products”. I tend to discount the opinions of those who get tribal or emotional about technology.

1. fake mppt controllers, power supply formfactor controllers like PowMR, MakeBlueSky, crude repackages, etc. ↩

2. $$ voltage sensing instead of a wire, spotty BT ↩