271 Ah upgrade
I'm sitting in the camper now on our shakedown voyage with the new 271 Ah LifePo4 battery I built from 4 3.2 cells I bought from China. This is working out so well that I'm seriously considering build...
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First full day boondocking. Somehow during our drive the DC charger did not fully charge the battery. I think I have fixed the setting that let that happen. So we arrived yesterday at 75% charged. Then because it was late I offered to fire up the generator so we could reheat some food for dinner in the microwave. I had been meaning to test out the generator with the new battery and never got around to it. Tried to start the gen and lost all power, in the dark. Not fun.
I pulled out my volt meter and saw voltage coming into the DC distribution panel and was stumped. Apparently that was just residual voltage which soon dissipated. Two weeks ago when I removed the malfunctioning automatic resetting 40 amp circuit breaker I replaced it with a 40 amp fuse at the battery terminal. Well, I blew that fuse because I forgot about the power the gen requires for starting( a whopping 250AMPS!).
After I got all that sorted out and restored power we went to bed and in the morning we had about 60% battery. We moved to a flatter site and after I got everything set up we were at 55%. I figured no big deal, it's going to be cloudy but should clear up in the afternoon. I started monitoring the usage and even though I was getting solar coming in I was still eating up about 15 amps. It took me about a half hour of head scratching(and doing other things) before I noticed that my wife had put the fridge in DC mode before we moved campsites. D'oh!
I set it to LP and the sun came out. We topped out at 93% today and I'm using about 7 amps right now running a fan, radio, internet and charging a laptop.
I expect to be fully charged tomorrow.
I pulled out my volt meter and saw voltage coming into the DC distribution panel and was stumped. Apparently that was just residual voltage which soon dissipated. Two weeks ago when I removed the malfunctioning automatic resetting 40 amp circuit breaker I replaced it with a 40 amp fuse at the battery terminal. Well, I blew that fuse because I forgot about the power the gen requires for starting( a whopping 250AMPS!).
After I got all that sorted out and restored power we went to bed and in the morning we had about 60% battery. We moved to a flatter site and after I got everything set up we were at 55%. I figured no big deal, it's going to be cloudy but should clear up in the afternoon. I started monitoring the usage and even though I was getting solar coming in I was still eating up about 15 amps. It took me about a half hour of head scratching(and doing other things) before I noticed that my wife had put the fridge in DC mode before we moved campsites. D'oh!
I set it to LP and the sun came out. We topped out at 93% today and I'm using about 7 amps right now running a fan, radio, internet and charging a laptop.
I expect to be fully charged tomorrow.
