Wire Gauge Required Question
For some reason I just can't understand the various wire gauge tables, and I have tried to, so I am hoping somebody will take pity and do all the work! :) One table that I can follow says that for...
Forum Discussion
Almot wrote:smkettner wrote:
And consider how many hours are you in bulk vs absorption in real use.
If you are in absorption all day then your solar is probably too small.
Er... you probably meant "in bulk mode all day"... In absorption mode it may indeed stay most of the day, slowly making it from 98% to 99 to 99.9%...
More complications! My (RIP) LS2024 controller had a two-hour time limit in Absorption at 14.6v, then dropped to Float at 13.8v for the rest of the day. My $13 RJ Special stays at 14.4v once it gets there till dark, when voltage drops till morning. (Actually, so far it seems like a fairly neat little controller)
Just when you get to the set Vabs depends on your charging rate--IE the ratio of charging amps to the AH capacity of the bank. Lower charging rate = hitting Vabs at a higher SOC but takes way longer.
So how much daylight time do you have? Also what loads are you going to run meanwhile to screw up the charging while the sun is still up?
Should you run your laptop on its own battery till the trailer batts are right up, then recharge the laptop, or run the laptop off the inverter from the get-go, so your trailer batts don't get to as high an SOC that day? Camping tactics!!!
