Battery replacement

[Smitty77]

Mike - For people who do not boon dock, such as yourself, IMO - Marine Batteries are an OK way to go. (And having read many of your posts here, and elsewhere, over the years - I suspect you are fine without 'my opinion'! It is posted to share my thought with others that might read this thread ahead.)

OP - I believe you did say you plan to boon dock(?). Also IMO, I would suggest going with true Deep Cycles. You decide the cost effectiveness of the GC2 Wet Cell, large 8D and or even L16's... Say vs the higher costs of AGM's, of various sizes.

I do encourage you taking sometime to accomplish some energy usage audits, to determine you average usage. This will allow you to determine the size of your House Bank more effectively.

Battery life, Wet or AGM, is all about the batteries rated 'Life Cycle'. It's pretty basic, a battery is built to a specific cost point, and has rated total number of hours out/total number of hours in - once that is reached, the battery needs to be replaced. So when sizing, do the math on say adding excess House Bank Total AH ratings - that would allow you to live on say the top 25% of the battery. (Using SOC talk. If you pick a goal of overnight consumption that would keep you in the 70-80% remaining SOC, you would accomplish two things. 1) That non infinite rated Life Cycles will stretch out longer then if you were to run down to 50% SOC every bight. No, probably not exactly double, but say instead of 6-7 years of usage, you could see 9-10 years of usage. And 2) You will have 'contingency' AH's available for in case you can not run a generator, or if you have solar, you're in a shady location. (To me, this extra cushion of contingency AH's (In this example being able to go down from 75% to 50% SOC.) is important enough of a safety edge - that I spend the higher funds on sizing the bank accordingly.

Last tip, if you do not have a good monitoring system, budget one into the overall House Bank Battery Management. I went with a Magnum BMK-Meter, as I have all Magnum equipment. Bogart has very well respected meter.

Another, IMO! For those who want to boon dock, even if only 20-30% of the time - having effective battery management meter is pretty important!

Best to all,
Smitty

[dhetrick2]

Originally Posted by Smitty77

Mike - For people who do not boon dock, such as yourself, IMO - Marine Batteries are an OK way to go. (And having read many of your posts here, and elsewhere, over the years - I suspect you are fine without 'my opinion'! It is posted to share my thought with others that might read this thread ahead.)

OP - I believe you did say you plan to boon dock(?). Also IMO, I would suggest going with true Deep Cycles. You decide the cost effectiveness of the GC2 Wet Cell, large 8D and or even L16's... Say vs the higher costs of AGM's, of various sizes.

I do encourage you taking sometime to accomplish some energy usage audits, to determine you average usage. This will allow you to determine the size of your House Bank more effectively.

Battery life, Wet or AGM, is all about the batteries rated 'Life Cycle'. It's pretty basic, a battery is built to a specific cost point, and has rated total number of hours out/total number of hours in - once that is reached, the battery needs to be replaced. So when sizing, do the math on say adding excess House Bank Total AH ratings - that would allow you to live on say the top 25% of the battery. (Using SOC talk. If you pick a goal of overnight consumption that would keep you in the 70-80% remaining SOC, you would accomplish two things. 1) That non infinite rated Life Cycles will stretch out longer then if you were to run down to 50% SOC every bight. No, probably not exactly double, but say instead of 6-7 years of usage, you could see 9-10 years of usage. And 2) You will have 'contingency' AH's available for in case you can not run a generator, or if you have solar, you're in a shady location. (To me, this extra cushion of contingency AH's (In this example being able to go down from 75% to 50% SOC.) is important enough of a safety edge - that I spend the higher funds on sizing the bank accordingly.

Last tip, if you do not have a good monitoring system, budget one into the overall House Bank Battery Management. I went with a Magnum BMK-Meter, as I have all Magnum equipment. Bogart has very well respected meter.

Another, IMO! For those who want to boon dock, even if only 20-30% of the time - having effective battery management meter is pretty important!

Best to all,
Smitty

I have been doing some research on a battery monitoring system and reading inverter/charger posts and now wondering if my inverter is working properly? I have pulled the panel off and looked at the inverter, should I hear a fan running when it's charging? I have the original Heart Interface freedom 20D, the on/off switch on the inverter is taped to the off position in RTM I believe this is for override operation?

[deandec]

On my Freedom 25, the switch on the Inverter is to be set to Off if controlled by a remote device according to the manual.

That is the way it has run for us over many years.

What symptoms do you have to cause you to think your inverter is not working properly?

[dhetrick2]

Originally Posted by deandec

On my Freedom 25, the switch on the Inverter is to be set to Off if controlled by a remote device according to the manual.

That is the way it has run for us over many years.

What symptoms do you have to cause you to think your inverter is not working properly?

Well it does appear that the inverter/charger is working, after charging on shore power several days the batteries did charge up, started the generator just fine left unplugged overnight and the batteries were dead in the morning. The batteries are just bad for sure and getting replaced. I have a freedom 20D and after RTM again its the same with a remote switch on the panel.