Need help with Solar setup

[Kevin Means]

I'm curious... what kind of RV do you have, and why do you want to power your 120 volt AC appliances differently than the way it came from the factory?

You said your batteries started indicating 12.2 volts five minutes after you connected your charge controller to the batteries. That 12.2 volts is NOT an indication of the battery-bank's voltage, it's an indication of the charge controller's output voltage, which isn't very much voltage for charging. (Maybe a cloudy day?)

You can't use a volt meter to accurately determine the SOC of a battery-bank when a charger of any kind is charging your batteries. The readings you get will be an indication of the charger's voltage - not the battery-bank's voltage. If you want to accurately measure the battery-bank's voltage, disconnect the charger and all loads from the battery-bank, let the batteries sit for about 30 minutes, and then hook a volt meter up to the batteries. That will give you a pretty good indication of the battery-bank's voltage.

If you want to know your battery-bank's SOC while it's charging, or discharging, you need a battery monitor (like a Trimetric RV 2030.) They're installed with a shunt and programmed for your battery-bank's AH rating. In my opinion, if your goal is to boondock, a good battery monitor is a necessity.

Kev

 

[Charchlo]

Thanks Kevin for your insight, just ordered a Victron 700 series battery monitor. Maybe once I can see what is actually happening with the batteries I can proceed from there. I do plan on doing mostly boondocking so this, like you said seems pretty essential. I'm including a screenshot of the software that came with my charger controller.

 

[Charchlo]

Good news and one more question. Everything is running great now. Having the battery monitor really helps me wrap my head around what is going on with the whole system. Have been off grid for 3 days now and have only been depleting about 1.3 -1.5 of capacity per day which is easily refilled the next day. Monitor says I can go 240 hrs at current consumption, but I don't know about that. lol

My latest question is how to work around the converter (which took me a couple hours to find, it was under the sink). I was hoping for a dedicated breaker, but no such luck. It is tied into a breaker labeled "general purpose" which also runs power to the non GFCI outlets so that kinda defeats the whole purpose of plugging the inverter into the shore power line. I know it is a bad thing to have both systems running at the same time. There are two lines running into the converter one red and one white, I'm assuming that the white is the 120 input and the red is the 12v output. My question is if I disconnect these wires will the 12v circuits still work off the connection from the batteries?

Thanks for all your help

 

[SuperMike]

"have only been depleting about 1.3 -1.5 of capacity per day"

Sorry I don't understand this or indeed anything else on this thread. You seem to be talking in riddles. Are you, with this sentence, referring to volts, because if you are, then you are taking the batteries to where they will not come back from.  Totally confused of St Albans