RV Batteries

On Friday evening, we unplugged, emptied our holding tanks, and moved to our regular spot for the season. We had been parked in the front row here at the Kingston KOA, in order to be close to a water supply because the water isn't turned on yet. But now we know we can make it on our 38 gallon holding tank until they turn the water on later this week.

And we had been told that the electric hadn't been switched on yet in our regular spot, but we don't need electric anyhow. And I wanted to "test" our new batteries under less than ideal conditions. They were calling for cloudy with showers all weekend, and highs of 6C (44F).

I had told you about our battery history in a previous post.

When we moved on Friday night, the batteries were pretty much fully charged because we had been plugged in, and our built in charger does a pretty good job of keeping the batteries just over 90% full. We used both laptops Friday evening, and the furnace for an hour or so before going to bed. When we went to bed, the batteries were at about 12.6v, which is almost 90%.

Used the furnace again when we got up Saturday morning, and the laptops for an hour or so. Ruth continued with laptop use on and off throughout the day on Saturday. It was cloudy with showers, and the sun never came out, so very little power went into the batteries from the solar panels. We watched 3 episodes of The Amazing Race through a free site I found online. And we used the furnace in the evening to keep the temperature at about 18C (65F). The furnace came on once or twice during the night to keep the temperature at 10C (50F). When we got up this morning, I tested the batteries and the "resting voltage" was at 12.4v, which is still about 80%.

To give you an idea of how much power we still have left, these batteries can occasionally be run down to 11.8v (30%) without doing long term damage to the batteries.

We have power to spare!