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...
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Ductape wrote:NinerBikes wrote:smkettner wrote:
I would get solar before the monitor.
I would agree with this. And if you get a little RC charger monitor with an amp meter hooked up in line while charging, with a little practice, your solar panels output capacity versus the voltage and amps the batteries are taking in will give you a really good handle on the State of Charge of your batteries.
If your solar panels are capable of 25 Amps, and your batteries are taking 14.3 -14.4V but only accepting 5 amps or less, you are pretty much topped off on charge on your batteries. The scenario changes a bit as fall and winter approach and the days get shorter, generator time might need to make up a bit early in the day when the batteries state of charge is lowest, then let the solar panel do the top off charging the rest of the sunny day.
This kind of what I was thinking. I can sort of read SOC crudely now by watching charge rate via ac current on the converter and battery voltage. I have a PD so I can keep it at any of the three charging voltages I want with the remote.
With 2 banks I can disconnect 1 for a few hours or overnight to get a resting voltage. They are the GPL-6CT as someone else indicated.
A cheap RC $16 ebay amp Watt meter/volt meter, also counts the total number of amps that have been recharged. It gives you a cumulative total, every single time. You want to know that when recharging touchy lithium ion batteries.
