Battery monitor: useful tool or toy?
Hello all. As we prepare for FT (mostly boondocking) I am working through the 12v upgrades. Got the 600 AH of Lifelines in place. Two banks of 6v pairs; 4 batts in all. Upgraded the converter to 80, p...
Forum Discussion
Amp hour counting is much more reliable, overall, but volt meters have their uses. For instance, they make great charging monitors, for keeping an eye on whatever source you're using; be it solar, alternator, converter, charger.
The problem I have with using a volt meter for establishing SOC, is you cannot possibly get a proper read while the batts are either under load or being charged... which is probably 100% of the time, either way. And a single decimal place volt meter can be very deceiving. If for example it rounds up, like both the trimetric's and the xantrex inverter's do, a 12.4v reading could actually mean the batts are at 12.32v. On 300Ah bank, like yours, that's a difference of about 22Ah's. This may or may not be a concern for you.
And if you plan to boondock a lot, then you may want to consider using a charger, not a converter with a charging feature, if your new converter drops to 13.6v during absorption mode. This will reduce generator run times to less than half the time on a 300Ah bank. And yes, an inverter charger would be better as well.
And keep in mind, with two banks, that means two separate monitoring systems, which could get rather costly.
The problem I have with using a volt meter for establishing SOC, is you cannot possibly get a proper read while the batts are either under load or being charged... which is probably 100% of the time, either way. And a single decimal place volt meter can be very deceiving. If for example it rounds up, like both the trimetric's and the xantrex inverter's do, a 12.4v reading could actually mean the batts are at 12.32v. On 300Ah bank, like yours, that's a difference of about 22Ah's. This may or may not be a concern for you.
And if you plan to boondock a lot, then you may want to consider using a charger, not a converter with a charging feature, if your new converter drops to 13.6v during absorption mode. This will reduce generator run times to less than half the time on a 300Ah bank. And yes, an inverter charger would be better as well.
And keep in mind, with two banks, that means two separate monitoring systems, which could get rather costly.
