Isaac-1
Well-known member
My point is that in actual practical RV life one may be space/weight constrained to the 5000WH of Lead Acid, therefore necessitating routinely draining below the 50% charge level, it also may be more practical to take this performance hit vs the cost of modifying battery trays, etc. in order to fit more Lead acid batteries.
Lets use this historical typical example from say 10-15 years ago before LiFePo4 was a real practical option. RV comes from the factory equipped with 1 or 2 deep cycle batteries, and a battery tray that will hold at most 2 golf cart batteries. Adding 2 more batteries in order to allow the user to never discharge below 50% would require having a welding shop fabricate a custom battery tray which cost lets say $750+ (based on online accounts of people that have done it), then there is the cost of the 2 additional batteries at lets say $150 each, for a total cost of roughly $1,100 once you add in additional battery cables, tie downs, etc. Now lets say that in actual RV use deep discharging these batteries some of the time cuts the service life of the batteries in half, turning that 7 year service life into 3.5 years, the owner is still at brake even after 7 years (ie 4 x $150 worth of batteries every 7 years vs 2 x 2 x $150 worth of batteries every 3.5 years). I will leave it as an exercise to the student to figure out how much deep discharging the lead acid battery would have to shorten the service life of the battery for it to make up for the expense of adding a larger battery tray, and if this would happen in the typical 15-20 year lifespan of most RV's
Lets use this historical typical example from say 10-15 years ago before LiFePo4 was a real practical option. RV comes from the factory equipped with 1 or 2 deep cycle batteries, and a battery tray that will hold at most 2 golf cart batteries. Adding 2 more batteries in order to allow the user to never discharge below 50% would require having a welding shop fabricate a custom battery tray which cost lets say $750+ (based on online accounts of people that have done it), then there is the cost of the 2 additional batteries at lets say $150 each, for a total cost of roughly $1,100 once you add in additional battery cables, tie downs, etc. Now lets say that in actual RV use deep discharging these batteries some of the time cuts the service life of the batteries in half, turning that 7 year service life into 3.5 years, the owner is still at brake even after 7 years (ie 4 x $150 worth of batteries every 7 years vs 2 x 2 x $150 worth of batteries every 3.5 years). I will leave it as an exercise to the student to figure out how much deep discharging the lead acid battery would have to shorten the service life of the battery for it to make up for the expense of adding a larger battery tray, and if this would happen in the typical 15-20 year lifespan of most RV's
