12 volt fridges
Looking at a trailer with a 12 volt fridge and solar panel mounted on the roof. not sure of the size of panel. My question is this. how can i tell if the panel is charging the battery?
Forum Discussion
Trojan DOES show life curves for there deep discharge FLA GC and 12V batteries. for the GC2, life is >500 cycles discharge to 25% SOC/ 75% DOD. Probably representative of golf cart use. Pretty hard for us TT folks, even with lots of dry camping to hit 500 cycles to 70% DOD in a reasonable time. For the 12V FLA true deep discharge, life is about 1/2 that. Likely the result of having to use thinner plates to get 6 cells in a battery instead of 3.
And if you want to spend the bucks, trojan has a line of GC2's that have double or more the above mentioned cycle life.
to back up the Trojan spec's, I've gone through two sets of Trojan batteries in the last 20 years on one trailer. that trailer saw at least 50 deep discharges to anywhere from 50%DOD to 75% DOD every year. After 10 years I gave the batteries to a buddy who occasionally dry camps and they lasted him another 4 years. The second set had similar use, and last year one cell on one battery went dead.... so the second set ONLY lasted 10 years and only somewhere in the neighborhood of 500 charge/discharge cycles to 50% or more.
My other trailer was new in 2011 and it sees not as much deep discharges, I run 4 GC2's, but many down to 50%, probably on the order of 30/year, and those batteries are now 12 years old and SG test is similar to new. I'll probably replace them later this year before our annual two week dry campout.
The key to longevity IMHO is (a) don't let them sit to long at deep discharge before getting a FULL charge, that means getting the voltage up to 14.4 to 14.6V, which also means a typical WFCO charger is going to kill them and (b) keep them watered.
This is probably the last set of FLA I'll be getting, I figure when these are done lithium will be low enough cost premium to FLA to make the switch and get new charger as well.
And if you want to spend the bucks, trojan has a line of GC2's that have double or more the above mentioned cycle life.
to back up the Trojan spec's, I've gone through two sets of Trojan batteries in the last 20 years on one trailer. that trailer saw at least 50 deep discharges to anywhere from 50%DOD to 75% DOD every year. After 10 years I gave the batteries to a buddy who occasionally dry camps and they lasted him another 4 years. The second set had similar use, and last year one cell on one battery went dead.... so the second set ONLY lasted 10 years and only somewhere in the neighborhood of 500 charge/discharge cycles to 50% or more.
My other trailer was new in 2011 and it sees not as much deep discharges, I run 4 GC2's, but many down to 50%, probably on the order of 30/year, and those batteries are now 12 years old and SG test is similar to new. I'll probably replace them later this year before our annual two week dry campout.
The key to longevity IMHO is (a) don't let them sit to long at deep discharge before getting a FULL charge, that means getting the voltage up to 14.4 to 14.6V, which also means a typical WFCO charger is going to kill them and (b) keep them watered.
This is probably the last set of FLA I'll be getting, I figure when these are done lithium will be low enough cost premium to FLA to make the switch and get new charger as well.
