Electrical thoughts after a 12 day road trip

[user 37446]

[font=Verdana, Arial, sans-serif]But after 5 days of no sun I was probably about to start dropping below the 50% point. And once that low it is just so hard to get the Amps back into the battery. [/font]

You've already gotten some good advice:

reduce power demands, conservation beats extra capacity if possible (maybe turn off the fridg sometimes)

increase solar if possible (I don't necessarily think series is what you need as any shading wipes out nearly the whole thing)

get a small 1000 watt gas inverter gennie (but storing it and gas is an issue)

pay for a night in a cheap rv park (but you need a big battery charger, the little 10-12 amp ones likely won't do enough)

Get an ACR, or make your own continuous duty solenoid system (many ways discussed in previous electrical threads)

Get a CTEK 250 type system, with the Smart Pass additional 80 amp charger

Go more for Lithium Ion if you can afford it, even a 400+ watt unit would replenish quickly, however the cost ($450) would buy you more solar


Hope that helps

 

[deadwood]

Update on my system: I installed a VSR (Voltage Sensing Relay) yesterday that I bought on Amazon for about $80. Fairly easy to install it. My batteries are under the drivers seat so that was the hardest part. I have two 100 amp fuses on each end as close to each battery as possible. Got everything wired up and started the van up.. Wow!!!! I couldn't believe the Ams going into my battery when the relay opened up.

I think with the VSR working and because the van is my daily driver that it will be able to put a lot of Amps into the battery in a short time. Then with my solar going that will be able to top off the battery and get it to a fully charged state. It's only been a day but I can see a huge difference in battery voltage at the end of the day. I'll give it a few weeks to see how things are going and make another post to update how it's working.

I'm still learning as I go and what I learned from this experience is that having just solar will not be enough to keep me properly charged up. If I had more room for more watts up top it might make a difference. I think the combination of the VSR and the solar should complement each other nicely. The VSR puts a lot of amps in while driving and then the solar can do it's thing and slowly get me up to a full charge.

 

[highdesertranger]

thanks deadwood. yes we love updates. highdesertranger