Switching from 12 volt to 6 volt batteries
After our third time out dry camping with our new travel trailer, we started running into battery bank issues. Our first two times out, we had no issues at all with running down our battery bank overn...
Forum Discussion
CA Traveler wrote:
GravelRider,
Consider a decent battery monitor so that you know the battery charge (SOC) and can better manage your loads and gen charging. There are $20 meters that can also help.
If your batteries are only being charged to 13.6V then they are signifcantly undercharged which contributes to your problem and this is common with to many RV chargers. Chargers during the bulk stage should raise the voltage to 14.4-14.8V. Following the bulk is the absorb stage where the voltage and amps taper down eventually reaching the float stage. 100% SOC takes a lot of hours so gen charging 50-90 SOC is generally used. OR morning gen charge and then solar finishes the charge. OR just solar except on overcast days.
I've been using the battery monitor that came with the RV (which shows only voltage), and have tested its accuracy with my multimeter, and it appears to be very accurate. Are there monitors that will show more than this? Any that you would recommend?
I suspect that the voltage goes higher than 13.6 V, because it does get the batteries to 12.7 volts (flooded LA battery), and if the batteries are really low, the generator will overload if A/C is on, but after a few minutes of running the generator, I can turn on the A/C with no problem... But I never actually looked at the voltage during this time, which I definitely need to do to get an accurate picture.
