Solar and Lifeline

campigloo wrote:
Hi y’all
First thanks to all who have tried to help with this project
I finally got my Renogy system up and running. 4 -100 watt panels on the roof. 30amp mppt controller, 2000w pure sine wave inverter charger. I finished off with 4 - 6v Lifeline deep cycles, wired series parallel to have 2 - 12v batteries. Purchased in December, man I was all excited, ready to go! Then I started using them. I’m soooo disappointed! At first they seemed fine. Then I put a small load on them. A few l e d light bulbs, a propane detector, the fridge on 12v service and an antenna amplifier. Ran the a/c tv, 160w for about a minute and the voltage plummeted. I don’t have the numbers because I didn’t worry about it at first, but the batteries have not performed well since. Lifeline tells me I need an additional 400 w solar, or I need a new charger that will equalize to 15+ v using the generator. Even after running the gen for 15 hours and charging to 100% according to the monitor and 13.4v according to the meter they will drop to 12.4 to 12.7 in a matter of a couple of hours tops. If I run the heater overnight the voltage drops to 12.3 to 12.0. My 2 Walmart 12v deep cycles outperformed these things!
Sorry for the long post but what are your systems doing and what do you think the problem might be? Any help would be really appreciated. I bought a couple of gallons of gasoline today incase I need to relieve some frustration!

What kind of "fridge on 12v service"? If it's an absorption fridge with propane/DC/AC, that may be your greatest battery killer right there. It takes a huge amount of 12VDC power to heat the gas on the 12V setting. At least it used to when I had a Dometic in my Roadtrek. The Atwood in the Sunstar didn't have a 12V setting, just gas and 120VAC. Your 400W of solar in decent sun should give you between 20 and 25 amps of recharge, so that should probably keep up with your other usage, unless I'm missing something. Entirely possible.