Solar panel battery problems

Someone didn't do their usage audit in amps per 24 hour period, and battery capacity correctly before buying a solar panel kit.

You paid for basic, you got bare basic for your money.

I can almost guarantee also that you need more solar panel, and an adjustable voltage charge controller that you can manually set the charging voltage to 14.8V or more, perhaps 15.0V, so the amps don't drop so quickly charging your batteries when at 90% or above state of charge, the slow portion of every daily battery recharge session, every 24 hour period. Also, your run from charge controller to battery needs to be very short, and with heavy gauge copper wire, to minimize voltage losses between charge controller and battery. Between panel and charge controller isn't quite as important for fat gauge wiring, you can afford to lose a little bit of voltage on that wiring run. But between charge controller and battery is critical.

One must always have a backup plan to generate power to recharge batteries in the event of non sunny days all day. Usually a portable generator like a Honda EU2000i, or Yahaha, or something quiet

Do your energy audit first. First improvement step if they aren't already in your rig is the R&R with LCD lights to lower current consumption to less amps. Next is a cataltytic heater and cracked, vented open windows for heating, instead of that forced air fan heater that sucks your batteries down.

Third is if you have a group 24 or 27 or 29 or 31 battery or two for you power supply, and they say "Deep Cycle" on the fancy labels, be prepared for them to die quickly, they are not true deep cycle batteries for dry camping... a pair of Golf Cart 2 6 volt batteries are true deep cycle batteries, paired in series to give you 12V power, and 210 amp hours, of which you should NEVER use more than 50% of those amp hours, or 105 a/h, lest you shorten the life of the batteries severely. If you dry camp a lot, off the grid, you need industrial grade batteries... they cost some big $$$ but if maintained properly, will serve you well for many years.

This is a dopperganger view of me and this smart phone. Whomever created the term Plug N Play should be surgery modified so his genes are obliterated and cannot be passed to offspring...

how many watts is the windy nation kit?

Moved from Forum Technical Support

Without more data it's hard to say what is wrong. Could be bad controller, too long/too thin wiring run from controller to battery, bad battery, not enough sun (shadow on the panel?), maybe something else. Is the controller routed directly to battery or does it go through the trailer's converter?

You should have your battery checked to see if it's ok. If it is, use a meter to see what your battery voltage is reaching after a day of solar charge. Make sure no shadows are cast on your panel by nearby objects; one small shaded patch will cut solar panel output to almost nothing. If all else checks out, you may need a clamp meter to check actual current flow in various parts of the circuit.

I had no trouble keeping my battery topped up with a 70W panel and Morningstar controller feeding into my trailer's 12V pigtail. I don't think your parasitic load should be very high (normally), but we don't know what all you're running, either.

RoyB wrote:
One must always need to have a working multimeter around to keep tabs on what is happening around your batteries...

Yep.

Solar panels do not produce a lot of DC CURRENT. A typical 120WATT SOLAR PANEL will only produce 5-6AMPS DC CURRENT. This is probably pretty close to your PARASITIC DRAIN of your specific RV UNIT.

It takes 14.4VDC with the capacity of 20AMPD DC current to charge a single RV 12VDC Battery to its 90% charge state in a three hour time period.

One must always need to have a working multimeter around to keep tabs on what is happening around your batteries... When you are charging the batteries with solar panels you should see either 14.4VDC across the battery terminals at beginning of the charge period and this then will drop back to 13.6VDC until the battery reaches 90% charge state.

A typical battery that is fully charged when read in its sitting state should read 12.6-7VDC across the terminals...

The SOLAR REGULATOR should work just like your on-board converter/charger unit when charging your batteries...

Sounds like the batteries were fully charged on the first day and you was not putting back enough solar power to overcome the draws the batteries was seeing. If you only have one typical 100watt to 120Watts solar panel you will only be producing 5-6AMPS DC current as long as the panels are aligned in the high sun. Once the battery starts going down in capacity this is not enough DC CURRENT to do you much good except for keeping the battery topped off...

The solar panels are NOT much good for you unless you store the solar energy in the battery banks where you can use after the sun goes down...

Just my thoughts

Roy Ken