The time has come to truly test my new electrical system. I’m starting with a full charge, my batteries are watered, and I’m looking at a long stretch of warmth and sun. This is going to be my first attempt to truly live off grid on a fairly normal routine. The only thing missing is the DC charger for my Mac and that will be here Saturday. So I only have about another hour on my Mac tonight and an hour total tomorrow, then I’ll need to take it for a drive on Friday. Hopefully, the DC charger will work and I will have enough power to use my Mac as much as I need to!
One thing I am going to aim for is to live as much as I can by the sun. The days are short, so that won’t be super feasible, but I am going to try as much as possible to restrain my computer usage to daylight hours and use my iPad in the evenings.
I tend to spend my evenings sitting in the dark when I boondock, but I’m pretty sure that’s ridiculous with my set up. So I am allowing myself one LED light on in whatever room I’m and will see if that’s sustainable.
Finally, I have a ton of projects to do that do not require power but do require good weather. So I will attempt to spend a little less time at the keyboard and a little more time on other things while I am here, in addition to road tripping around the environs.
Well, methinks it’s time for dinner. Spinach salad, bratwurst, and sweet potato fries anyone?
This will indeed be the test! Good luck, we await the reports!
I’m having a hard time determining if voltage readings matter. I know they don’t tell me anything about the state of my batteries, but they do determine what I can run. It’s really irksome to have a battery at 98%, to be running only the fridge and an LED light, and to see the voltage readings in the high elevens to low twelves so that when the water pump kicks on, the light flickers and voltage readings go down to 10! The only thing that is consoling me is that I’m not getting a ‘low voltage’ warning from the monitor and the fridge the way I was with my old batteries, so I’m hopeful all is normal…
High eleven’s is not “normal” and the only time mine drops down to the ten’s is for just a second when I plug me extra 110 volt fridge in.
I have little experience with living off the grid but when we were boondocking in a parking lot in Laughlin, NV, we watched TV at night for three or four hours. When I turned the inverter off at midnight or so, the batteries were reading +/- 11.8 volts. The sun the next day would bring them back to +/- 12.6. At the time I thought 11.8 was “low”.
Like I say, I don’t have enough experience to make an informed opinion.
Batteries are just about fully discharged by the time you hit 12.0 volts. So if that reading of yours actually represents the state of discharge of your batteries at the end of the night, you’re really abusing them. 🙂
That said, voltage alone tells you squat about the state of your batteries, that’s why you need a monitor. The monitor tells me that I started the night with a full charge (12.6V), that I’ve used so many amp hours, and I have so many amp hours left. The reading I’m seeing only reflects what voltage is being used, not the discharge amount. Even though I’m seeing a reading in the 11s, my batteries are in good shape. The question is: am I running too much? And if the answer is ‘yes’, then I’m in trouble because I’m not running much!
http://www.andybaird.com/Eureka/pages/batteries.htm#monitors
I have been using volt meters to monitor the state of charge of my batteries with the following info:
http://www.marxrv.com/12volt/12volt.htm
It is not as good as a monitoring system but it is all I have. Please let us know how your first few days off the grid works out. I have only one 12 volt 100 AMPH house battery, no solar and I can go two days without running the genni to recharge.