dc92974

Reporting back... I ordered and setup the Victron. While I was waiting I took my batteries to a place I could plug them in and let them charge for the week (I pulled my rv charger and used that). It took about 1.5 days before the charger dropped to the trickle maintenance mode. So, I'm pretty sure my initial testing didn't start with fully charged batteries. The voltages are about the same but the Victron is showing that my batteries have stayed in the 90% level all week. We haven't had any sun for solar this week but I did run my generator a few times while I was making dinner in the evening. I seem to pull about 0-4w most of the time which seems reasonable. It's awesome to be able to turn something on/off and immediately see the impact it has. I don't see anywhere where the Victron shows the input when I'm charging. On my solar panel I can see I managed about 30ah for the week but I don't see anything on the Victron, am I just missing it? It would be nice to get a better picture of how my charging is affecting the battery charge. There is a summary screen that looks like it should show input but it seems to low. It would be nice to have the ability to scroll through historic numbers (and to see numbers when I'm not connected). I can live without that though, for now I have a battery voltage monitor that shows history. So that combined with the Victron and Renogy solar controller gives a decent picture of what's going on.

For now I just have everything mounted on a plywood structure under the camper which is skirted. Trying to make sure I have everything I need and understand how it works before I start permanently mounting stuff. I'm terrible at that stuff so don't really want to have to do it twice 🙂 Figuring out where and how everything gets mounted will be a project for next summer.

I ordered the Victron BMV. Should be here this weekend and I can install it ans see if the new data source sheds some light on what's going on.

Thanks for all the replies and help. This is slowly morphing into a battery monitor post so I can get some more detailed info so... I have hopefully a basic question. With these battery monitors they all seem to also have their own brand of solar charge controller as well. I have a renogy one which isn't going to plug and play with any of them, will I lose functionality I need with a battery monitor because of this? Do I need to purchase a charge controller from the same vendor, that would be kind of sad since the Renogy one isn't even broke in yet.

I looked up some other charts and I see what you mean. The only thing I can come up with is the inclusion of temperature? Most of the charts I saw seemed to be for a set temperature like 80F. We do have pretty big temp swings right now. 50-60 for the high in the afternoon and 25-35 for the low in the morning. It's a little less of a change under the skirting but it's still probably a 20 degree temp difference when I check before I go to bed and get up in the morning. Could the temperature be what I'm seeing in the voltage differences?

Hmm, that's pretty intriguing. I like the idea of bluetooth. That would let me use it and get comfortable with it before a permanent install. Right now everything is setup under my skirted trailer. Same idea, learning what I need/want and then in the summer I'll do a full install when the weather's nice.

Optimistic Paranoid, I'm confused (which is why I'm here), maybe I have a different type of battery than you're talking about? The voltage figures come from the battery mfg and the battery is also completely sealed. I don't think there's any way to use a hydrometer on it because I can't get to the fluid?

The furnace is on but the temp is set to 40 and its not that cold yet so it doesn't turn on. The water heater gas and electric are turned off. No hot water... so no showers either :-). I just added my inverter info and some charge rate detail over the weekend as you were typing.

I got the voltages from the battery mfg website, they seem to agree with what the Renogy charge controller thinks too. (https://www.vmaxtanks.com/assets/images/technical info folder/state_of_charge_chart.pdf) I've replaced the charge controller that came with the trailer. I have the Progressive Dynamics PD9245CV now. (https://www.amazon.com/Progressive-Dynamics-PD9245CV-Inteli-Power-Converter/dp/B000GANZZ6). It's a 45 amp charger and has different modes depending on the battery state. I tried to get my batteries to 100% over the weekend, here's a break down. 10/20 15:30 12.8v (my starting point about 78% capacity) 10/20 15:30-19:30 Charging at 14.3v 10/20 19:30-20:30 Charging at 13.6v (Docs say it does this to charge the battery from 90-100%) 10/20 20:30 Turned off generator for night 10/21 09:00 Batteries at 12.74v. Turned generator on again. 10/21 09:00-11:00 Generator running charging at 14.3v 10/21 11:00-17:30 Solar panels charging 13-14.5v 10/21 17:30-18:00 Generator charging at 14.3v 10/21 18:00-20:30 Generator dropped to 13.6v 10/21 21:00 Everything off for the night. Batteries at 13.05 10/22 06:00 Wake up batteries at 12.74v again Now I'm at work, it's sunny today so when I get home tonight the batteries will probably be in the 12.7-12.8 range. Ready to run the generator for hours again 😞

The fridge is set to gas. I could flip the breaker for the inverter when the generator isn't running to see if that makes a difference. I would like to upgrade my solar system probably next summer, for now I'm trying to learn as much as possible so I can make good decisions on purchases. With "what I know of" that's drawing power they should last a lot longer right? Maybe my focus now needs to be to figure out how to monitor how much power (watts?) I'm drawing from the batteries. Maybe there's something I don't know about that's drawing off the batteries. Is if fair to say I should pretty much ignore the led battery lights on my camper's control panel? They probably are not very accurate compared to using the voltage?

This question is asked all over the internet but there are so many variables that I'm having still having trouble understanding if I have a problem. Background... I recently moved off grid, I've always been plugged into shore power up to this point. My stock rv batteries would barely hold a charge for 24 hours. I could run the generator to charge them up in the evening until the battery status was 4 full lights. The next day after work they would be down to 1 light. They are the stock batteries and were ~5 years old so I figured they were due to be replaced anyway. I replaced them 2 Vmax 6V 225ah batteries (https://www.vmaxtanks.com/V6-225-6Volts-225AH-Deep-Cycle-High-performance-AGM-Battery-_p_48.html). I also added small solar system with 2 100w solar panels. With the solar charge controller I gained the ability to see the actual voltage rather than just the 4 light system my camper has (guessing it isn't very accurate). Today... With the new batteries and solar setup I can charge the batteries in the evening until they say 100% (~13.1v). In the morning they will have already dropped to about 70% (12.7v). By the time I get home from work they will have dropped to about 60% (12.6v) depending on how much sun there is. (I only get 2-3 hours of sun this time of year) The battery status lights on the camper will show 3-4 stars through the whole day. So even with all the new stuff my batteries only last about 24 hours before they need recharged? I have almost everything turned off. The thermostat for the heater and fridge use electricity, the solar charger uses some when the sun isn't shining but that's about it. The water pump is on but it probably only runs 5-10 seconds total per day. I have the breakers turned off for everything but the inverter and I haven't even been using the led lights trying to save electricity. I'm not sure what to think, seems like batteries should last longer than 1 day. I'm also not sure what to think that by looking at the voltage I'm dangerously low after 24 hours but looking at the lights on the control panel I still have 3 lights? Any thoughts would be appreciated. It doesn't seem right to have to run the generator for hours every night to a few small electrical devices.