Hello. i'm back from my first 4 night off grid camp (blue dot festival). I have two solar panels into a C-Tek 250. My van is a T6. I have a small fridge (Indel-B), all LED lighting and also recharged devices, ran a fan for about 1 hour, made about 16 brews with my electric brew maker. My leisure battery is a 120amp lithium.
After 4 nights (3 full days) my battery battery went flat. It has been explained that the battery level indicator on my basic control panel (sargent ac50) can tell me nothing about the level of the lithium battery as it was designed for lead-acid etc types. I had been thinking I was at about 75% level but after three hours out I came back to no power. So a few questions.
Should my solar have been enough to keep power in the leisure battery? It was cloudy and drizzly most of the time.
Could I idle the van for X amount of time to recharge the leisure battery on a future off grid trip? I did hear a lot of vans idling in my field mid way through the festival..
Do fridges uses power all the time or just at start-up and when they sound like something is kicking in again?
Driving home (45mins) has put nothing into the battery, is this a worry?
I have connected my smart charger now I'm home and it has gone into "battery repair mode", is running my battery totally flat a big NO-NO?
I just checked my solar panels and they are outputting 20v, does this indicate they are connected in series? Should I get them rewired into parallel?
Thanks for any insights.
After 4 nights (3 full days) my battery battery went flat. It has been explained that the battery level indicator on my basic control panel (sargent ac50) can tell me nothing about the level of the lithium battery as it was designed for lead-acid etc types. I had been thinking I was at about 75% level but after three hours out I came back to no power. So a few questions.
Should my solar have been enough to keep power in the leisure battery? It was cloudy and drizzly most of the time.
Could I idle the van for X amount of time to recharge the leisure battery on a future off grid trip? I did hear a lot of vans idling in my field mid way through the festival..
Do fridges uses power all the time or just at start-up and when they sound like something is kicking in again?
Driving home (45mins) has put nothing into the battery, is this a worry?
I have connected my smart charger now I'm home and it has gone into "battery repair mode", is running my battery totally flat a big NO-NO?
I just checked my solar panels and they are outputting 20v, does this indicate they are connected in series? Should I get them rewired into parallel?
Thanks for any insights.
