Confusion on battery charging
I am confused about the best practices for charging batteries. For 7 years I had 300 AH of Lifeline AGM batteries, 270 watts of solar and a simple charging system. My old camper has a 110 volt c...
Forum Discussion
BFL13 wrote:
First thing is to note your "morning voltages" as mentioned earlier. You need some idea of voltage per SOC for your batts. AGMs are hard to tell for that depending on type and brand. You don't need exact--not resting while camping--but close is good enough for this job.
With some notion of Morning SOC, you can figure if the day's results are reasonable.
Or you can spend for a Trimetric monitor. It just shows battery, so you can subtract its amps from the solar controller's and get what is load. it will give you an AH count too.
My battery voltage is about 12.7 in the morning. That corresponds to using only about 10% or 30 AH. Last week the temps were lower so I used my furnace and dropped to 12.6. Even with the furnace I doubt I pull over 30 AH most nights. If I have decent solar that should be less than 3 hours of charging. No way! I can charge for hours longer and never seem to reach 14.3 and 1 amp.
