AGM vs Flooded Bulk Times

MrWizard wrote:
As extended full timers
Generator time and fuel costs can over run the any savings gain in battery life
This is where a larger solar array is a big long run cost saver
I'm definitely thinking about adding more panels

Mr Wizard is correct in choosing AGMs as we have seen, where he operates daily in the 75-95? SOC zone and sometimes goes to 100.

It is now clear why that is the correct choice over Wets for his situation. (For me doing some 50-90s a year, not a full-timer, Wets work better over-all in the various factors in play.)

On solar, if a MH has two rows of panels laid flat, you can swap from amorphous to poly and make a gain in panel area to increase the amps, plus you can tilt them for quite a good gain.

But that means parking E-W to have the panels tilted facing S. The "front" panels will shade the "back" panels if the fronts are tilted, so that means only tilting the back row. Even so that will make for a significant gain. It might be a huge PITA to arrange all that though.

So if the usual plan is to do some gen from 75-85 and the rest with solar, you could make up for having less solar just by running the gen a little longer at high amps charging, taking advantage of the AGMs being able to accept those high amps to a higher SOC.

Some juggling of the bean-counting will reveal the "optimum" combo and operating procedure. Which will be good until you change locations in a couple of days and the weather changes :)

But in every way, Mr Wizard is getting the best bang for his buck with AGMs the way he RVs. That doesn't mean everyone else would of course.

The thing this thread has shown IMO as I have learned from it, is just exactly how to exploit the AGM advantage and when there is and is not an advantage.

This gives you some factors to play with when planning or adapting your set-up.