First Dry Camping Experience
I thought I posted this, but it hasn't shown up, so we'll try again. Sorry if it's a duplicate... We had our first dry camping experience. It was nice, but could have been a lot better and now I ha...
Forum Discussion
SoundGuy, that was interesting. It turns out that this phenomenon is related to (but not quite the same as) "surface charge."
Paraphrasing the stuff I read, it seems that letting the battery rest before taking a reading is a means of compensating for "surface discharge." The surfaces of the plates get drawn down during use, but the interior of the plates don't always get discharged to the same extent.
So by letting the battery recover before taking a reading, we are allowing the plates to re-establish a uniform charge (uniform between the surface and the interior of the plates). This gives us a more accurate reading of the true state of charge than a quick reading based on the voltage during active usage.
This is important to boondockers and dry campers, because (as I can tell you from personal experience) I sometimes get pretty low momentary readings on the voltage -- if I am running the inverter and the furnace and the pump and the lights, I have seen 11.9 on the voltmeter.
If that were really the true voltage of the battery, it would be below 50 percent state of charge -- not good.
But then when I turn off all those systems and wait 15 minutes, I often get a reading of 12.4 or so. No problem!! And no need to run the generator, at least not quite yet.
Paraphrasing the stuff I read, it seems that letting the battery rest before taking a reading is a means of compensating for "surface discharge." The surfaces of the plates get drawn down during use, but the interior of the plates don't always get discharged to the same extent.
So by letting the battery recover before taking a reading, we are allowing the plates to re-establish a uniform charge (uniform between the surface and the interior of the plates). This gives us a more accurate reading of the true state of charge than a quick reading based on the voltage during active usage.
This is important to boondockers and dry campers, because (as I can tell you from personal experience) I sometimes get pretty low momentary readings on the voltage -- if I am running the inverter and the furnace and the pump and the lights, I have seen 11.9 on the voltmeter.
If that were really the true voltage of the battery, it would be below 50 percent state of charge -- not good.
But then when I turn off all those systems and wait 15 minutes, I often get a reading of 12.4 or so. No problem!! And no need to run the generator, at least not quite yet.
