Ductape wrote:
Yes, we mostly prefer to boondock. My thinking is to cram some bulk amps in over breakfast and then solar can top off while we are out and about during the days.
Note that some places have "generator hours" that may be after breakfast.
Note that to do bulk charging the batts have to be low, while solar keeps them high, so you might be operating within too high an SOC range to ever see bulk charging. Especially with a 600AH bank.
Then, if you do get the batts that low, it will take some time to recharge 600AH from 50-80 ( 30% of 600 = 180AH)
With an 80amp charger (80/600 = 13% charging rate) about 2.3 hrs
With 32% charging rate (192 amp charger) about 1.6 hrs
Add an hour for going to 90% as the 80-90 of the 50-90 will take that long in both cases.
It is possible to have too much battery so you can't ever get them fully charged in the time available on solar even with a shot of gen time early in the day. Now you need a split bank set-up so you can run on half the bank while fully charging up the other half which might take a couple days on solar. Gets complicated in some scenarios. Stays simple in other scenarios.
