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Equipping the Overland Vehicle Vehicle accessories - Making your home away from home comfortable, safe and reliable.
Photo by Marc Gibaud, Clouds on Tres Cerros and Mount Fitzroy, Argentinian Patagonia

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Photo by Marc Gibaud,
Clouds on Tres Cerros and
Mount Fitzroy, Argentinian Patagonia



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Old 20 Nov 2008
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Originally Posted by nickdisjunkt View Post
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If the 8 hours of driving does not recharge your batteries then the problem is definitely not with the batteries, it is with the charging system or the energy users. The easiest way to make sure that 8 hours is enough time for full recharge is to use less energy and discharge the batteries less each night. If this is not possible then you need to improve the charging system. I am not familiar with the National Luna unit but any dc to dc voltage regulator which does a decent 3 or 4 step charging system with a bulk, float and absorption stage will massively increase the rate of charge; the sterling units are certainly good value and are worth considering if the national luna doesn’t do this. These units are obviously at the mercy of the alternator output though so while they maximise the available power they are not substitute for putting a bigger (or even a second) alternator on the vehicle. I decent alternator with a decent voltage regulator will be enough to power all but the hugest auxiliary battery banks if you are driving for 8 hours per day but if this is still not enough, then one or two big 200w panels will help.




Most batteries that call themselves ‘deep cycle’ will certainly not tolerate being run flat regularly. The only batteries that can cope with total daily cycling from 100% to 0% are true traction batteries such as those used in rechargeable forklifts and as I mentioned earlier these are both heavy and expensive; not to mention the fact that they usually come in 2v units which need to be seriesed up to the desired voltage. The speed at which a battery can be recharged is a function of the amps that the charger (the alternator) is putting out and the voltage difference between the charging source and the battery. The set and constant voltage that an alternator puts out can reasonably charge a battery to 70% or so but after this point the voltage difference between the battery and the alternator gets so small that the charging rate drops off exponentially, to counter this an intelligent charger uses a higher voltage which will drop back at an appropriate point. 70% might seem adequate but unfortunately this is a misleading way of looking at it; a regular deep cycle battery is not deigned to be discharged below around 50% on many occasions and indeed the voltage gets so low beyond about 40% charge that most equipment including inverters and fridges will fail to operate. Effectively this means that your 100ah battery is only able to use around 22ah! Using an intelligent charger should (unless you have in inadequate alternator) be able to charge the batteries to near 100% in 8 hours of driving and so you can more than double your available energy reserves.




Low voltage protection systems rarely assist in protecting the battery to a great degree, they are usually intended to protect the sensitive equipment from operating at too low a voltage and it is usually the case that by the time the low voltage sensor cuts power the damage is already done. Using a decent battery monitor and keeping an eye on it will be a much better solution, but unless you sort the charging side of things you will quickly see that your system is unable to cope with the demands.

The use of solar panels will invariable mean the need to cycle the batteries heavily as you will only be able to charge the batteries in the day. If your charging systems and battery capacity are unable (as is the case at present) to keep up with the energy demands than all but the most expensive batteries will have a massively shortened life-span and so my recommendation would be to use the cheapest ‘leisure’ battery that you can find.

I can wholeheartedly recommend the motorhome electrics book by Collyn Rivers if you want to learn more about getting the most from your low voltage eclectics system.

Sorry for the rant but there is a lot of misinformation floating around on the internet and elsewhere and mistakes with batteries are invariably expensive.
Great info, thanks - been looking for the justification to buy one of these inteligent chargers they aint cheap .
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