Recent content by wrybread

That's of course great advice, and I love Morningstar, but they are a bit pricey compared to the alternatives. I have both the Morningstar MPPT 60 ($665) and a few installations with the Epever 40 amp ($160 with external monitor), and both seem to perform about equally in terms of actual watts...

I don't see how that matters. We're not formulating a research paper here, we're discussing how deep cycle batteries perform in real world situations. And in real world situations factors like solar on an RV probably not being able to recharge a deeply discharged battery in the 4 or so hours of...

That "expected life cycles" chart is interesting. The Y axis is non linear, which greatly straightens the curve, but it still tells part of the story: Routinely discharging batteries to 50% = 1000 cycles Routinely discharging batteries to 100% = 250 cycles Given the 225 amp hour capacity of a...

And here's those recommended guidelines by the way, straight from Trojan (although these apply to all lead acid deep cycle batteries): https://www.trojanbattery.com/tech-support/battery-maintenance/ Down near the bottom under "Discharging":

Good lord I hope no one takes your advice. If you routinely run your trojan t105s (or any deep cycle) to 10.5 volts they won't even last 6 months. That's pure neglect. See the links I posted, and countless others, just Google "usable capacity of deep cycle batteries". My bank of 4 t105s is...

I strongly disagree with that statement. Assuming someone already has batteries, solar is the cheapest part of the equation. Here's some panels near me that are $75 each for 260 watts. https://sfbay.craigslist.org/sby/grq/d/santa-paula-260-watt-rec-solar-panels/7481882620.html That price is...

You can use the bottom of the capacity of a lead acid deep cycle but you'll damage the battery. Maybe with Trojan T105's that's the bottom 50%, since they're better at deep cycling than most lead acid batteries. Have a look at the "state of charge" (SOC) chart here...

And it helps that the price of lithium batteries have come down a lot in the last couple of years. It's no longer necessary to buy Battle Born batteries at $.83 a watt hour. Now anyone can build their own from Eve cells (or similar) for about $.17 a watt hour including the BMS, which is...

Yeah there's definitely a premium for using an all-in-one power bank like this. But wiring a full system is daunting for some people. I wouldn't use a power bank personally, especially since I already have most of the components. But ths is how I'd build a comparable system from scratch off the...

The one you linked has about half the capacity of the Bluetti. It has a capacity of 1100 watt hours for $800, or $.72 per watt hour. The Bluetti has a capacity of 2048 watt hours for $1900, or $.92 per watt hour. The Bluetti is a bit more expensive per watt hour but has a huge advantage over the...

Another thing you might consider is building a battery from individual cells. Eve cells are really well rated and cheap: https://www.evcomponents.com/eve-3-2v-280ah-prismatic-lifepo4-cell.html That's $118 for 280 amp hours (they also make other sizes including 100ah). You'll need 4 of them to...

Awhile ago I rigged up a system that would divert all the power from my 900 watts of panels to my fridge after the batteries went into float (ie were fully charged). So instead of the panels doing nothing after my batteries were charged, they would run the fridge. It was shocking how little that...

One thing I'm suspecting is that the batteries might be bad. Impossible to say given the info here, but if you've confirmed that the panels are putting out power, and you're still not holding onto a charge, that's what I'd be looking at. And a charge controller would also probably be saying...

And check out this guy's sliding solar panel installation: I found him when searching YouTube for "RV mini split air conditioner", which he has. He's got 8 300-watt solar panels on a tiny little roof! I hope this kind of installation becomes more common, it's a great solution for RV air...

That's AWESOME! What a nice installation. I don't know much about mini splits, but looking at your install it looks like the two halves can be far apart and at different levels? Any disadvantages to that? I know, but they're a bit tricky to install in an RV. A mini-split just has a small hole...