Well, my battery happiness was short lived. 🙁 I hope that some of you are being entertained by the ups and downs of the electrical saga…

Last night, after dark, I shut down everything and watched a movie for a few hours. All I had on was the fridge, which draws about half an amp. No light, no computer. My battery monitor claimed that I was at 98% capacity in terms of amps available to me, but after two hours of resting, my batteries registered 12.3V, or 70% capacity.

I emailed Andy Baird to ask him what he thinks and he says that he hasn’t looked at voltage in years, relying only on his monitor, which has proven its worth. He reminded me that voltage fluctuates wildly depending on what you’re using and that it’s practically impossible to know the state of charge of batteries using voltage. So I should stop driving myself crazy looking at voltage readings. I thought I’d feel better, but I didn’t.

I awoke this morning to a battery monitor that says I should be at 96%, but voltage was just 12.0V or 45%!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I’m charging the laptop right now while using it and my voltage has dipped down to about 10.5V and the laptop is going to take FOREVER to charge. I can’t even put a light on or the fridge cuts out.

These numbers have so shocked me that I went outside both last night and this morning with a flashlight to recheck all my connections. Everything is fine on that end.

My best guess is that I have already ruined my brand new batteries causing them to not hold a charge, which is likely combined with them probably not being truly charged after all yesterday.

I’m done. That’s it, the towel’s on the floor. Everything is hooked up properly so I’m done troubleshooting and tweaking and whatever else and I declare the batteries the winners. Congratulations, guys, you put up a good fight.