I've been looking for my sweet spot for years... No luck so far...
I don't have solar panels yet but about to get into it... I start my day/night run with at least 90% SOC and will only do the 50% to 90% charge cycles for a few days.
I always follow up using my generator or shore power at the house to do the full 100% charge state ops... This takes over 12 hours to do so sometimes this may be a problem depending if you are at a location where running the generator is not allowed to run that long of a time. I would think one could almost always get the initial charge state going for an hour or so using the generator and then let the solar panels complete the charge cycle when in high sun. Of course you will run out of high sun especially here on the east coast side of the US.
The most I can see happening is you should be able to get your batteries from the 50% to the 90% charge state each day for doing a week long camping trip off grid and then do the long charging period after you get back to shore power somewhere (At Home in my case)... I do this routine using my generator each day for around three hours of run time when allowed and it keeps my 255AH battery bank pretty happy... They have lasted from 2009 to just last season 2015 and just won't hold a 90% charge state very long any more...
My camping routine is I usually draw around 20-23AMPS DC current from my 12V battery bank between the 6PM to 10PM time frame each day. This is probably high for the average off-grid camper...
In the old tent camping days all one needed was bag full of D-CElls and a can of white gas... We did just fine back then haha... Now we got all of those 120VAC appliances and things to deal with.
Roy Ken
