hey, a new mistake! (popped fuse)
I try to make new mistakes rather than old ones so here’s a new one. This one comes from a combination of factors and mistakes that remind me a bit of the Swiss cheese model of airplane crashes.
first hole - the overall setup
For historical reasons my power setup is set up for relatively low current – I don’t run (or plan to run) very large loads. So the POS coming off my bank is fused at 80A even though the bank could provide much more than that.
second hole - low SoC
I tend to run the bank around the upper-middle of capacity. In this particular case a series of weather, usage, and (lack of) travel resulted in the lowest SoC I’ve seen since I installed the bank a year ago: 13%.
third hole - chilly overnight
So I was running my heated mattress pad. It runs at 0w-90w in time slices based on the setting.
induction hob defaults to 1350w
My $20 thrift store induction cooker has served me well but has an annoying feature: it defaults to 1350w every time it’s turned on. I reflexively turn it down to 600w which serves my cooking and setup better.
I usually boil water on the kettle using the 275F preset. This preset will consume 770w, or 600w if the wattage is selected to 600w.1
background loads
My average van background loads are about 60w, surging to 100w when the Alpicool compressor is running.
the pop
All or some of these factors conspired to put me over the 80A fuse limit. I assume the inverted loads were the main problem since the current required to power them increases as bank voltage decreases. Pop!
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The 175F preset will also boil water (the temp function is wonky) but cycles on/off at 600w while getting there so it takes a bit longer for coffee. Based on the fuse pop I might try the 175F preset as a belt-and-suspenders way of keeping induction current limited to 600w. ↩