What is Eating Those Batteries?
I went to Quartzite yesterday to visit an old friend who is dry-camping on BLM land and has been having some electrical problems with his travel trailer, a 2001 KZ model. The problem is that even wit...
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If they have not been brought to 100% after a week or two of camping off grid doing 50-90s, you could see that. I get "progressive capacity loss" from doing just three 50-90s in a row where each time it gets worse, and the SG gets very low even though the voltages stand up ok.
You can tell the capacity is lost from how fast it takes to discharge or recharge the 50-90. That 40% in AH becomes smaller and smaller.
You just have to find shore power and get back to 100 so you can start over off grid or else you need enough solar to get to 100. That can be tough in the daylight time so I do a split bank thing and do one battery at a time on solar leaving it disconnected overnight so I can start again in the morning and get it to full on the second day. Meanwhile you run the rig on the other half of the bank. Then swap over so it can take four days to do two batteries. PITA.
The solar needs to be with no controller so the voltage gets right up to desulfation speed for that to work best or you might never get the batts done in the available daytimes. Easier to go to a full hookup park for a day if not going home anytime soon.
You can tell the capacity is lost from how fast it takes to discharge or recharge the 50-90. That 40% in AH becomes smaller and smaller.
You just have to find shore power and get back to 100 so you can start over off grid or else you need enough solar to get to 100. That can be tough in the daylight time so I do a split bank thing and do one battery at a time on solar leaving it disconnected overnight so I can start again in the morning and get it to full on the second day. Meanwhile you run the rig on the other half of the bank. Then swap over so it can take four days to do two batteries. PITA.
The solar needs to be with no controller so the voltage gets right up to desulfation speed for that to work best or you might never get the batts done in the available daytimes. Easier to go to a full hookup park for a day if not going home anytime soon.
