Every morning I come down the ladder, deal with LB’s insecurity issues, then take a hightech composition book down off the shelf and record certain bits of data, including indicated battery voltage.
This morning’s voltage reading was…anomalous…
Not a surprise, of course. A normal reading, which this time of year would have been 12.0 to 12.1, would have been an unpleasant surprise.
I also expect the system to hit float around 10, which is normal for a sunny day. All it means is that I didn’t do anything profligate with electricity last night, because I wanted to see if the morning reading and the daily charge-up time went as expected.
It’s logical that they should, A is A, but sometimes it turns out A isn’t really A because I don’t know as much about what I’m doing as I think I do. Logic based on ignorance rarely works out well. So before I install a disco ball or an electric furnace or something, let’s check our premises.
The next question will be – should I happen to go nuts with the electricity overnight or during a gloomy spell, can my oddbit solar panel collection recharge the batteries in a reasonable day? I plan to approach the answer to that question in a gingerly but determined fashion. I’ll just keep telling myself it doesn’t really matter – I originally thought these batteries were junk anyway so if I dig myself into a hole I can always reinstall the Interstates.
A handy T105 data sheet:
http://www.trojanbattery.com/pdf/datasheets/T105_Trojan_Data_Sheets.pdf
Four T105’s wired for 12v when new are rated 450 Amp-Hours which is twice my system capacity. I’ve had very good luck using Uxcell meters to monitor both charge and load currents:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0050MQK16/ref=ox_sc_act_title_2?ie=UTF8&psc=1&smid=A1THAZDOWP300U
(They come in a good variety of range limits)
I’ve one like this which is excellent because It will give me incoming or load over time. Mine is now just connected to a backup generator-charger but A second would be great for monitoring both watts in and watts out.:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01JOUZELG/ref=ox_sc_act_title_4?ie=UTF8&psc=1&smid=A15H3UKRB6RHF9
If you care to give it a go, so say. I can chip in as I know you will very likely provide useful feedback on how it works out in your application.
🙂
A hand calculator down the page here for estimating how much valuable power is being lost to heat in our wire runs!
http://www.powerstream.com/Wire_Size.htm
I had to use the googler machine to find out if that was good or bad….