For the folks the boondock a lot with solar what is the real useable life ( years)of your AGM batteries, especially interested if you have a res fridge?
8 years and going strong for our AGMs. RV fridge.
P
12 years and going strong.
John
My oem gel batteries lasted 11 years. Too soon to tell on my 3 year old agm batteries.
The next question is if you have solar, do you let the solar do the battery charging all the time. Or do you leave the on board charger on and solar on all the time?
When we stayed in Yuma last winter plugged in, I turned the charger off the whole time we were there, 6 weeks. We have 350 watts solar and three 8 D wet batts. PO used start batts, but they are Deka batts. They do just fine.They are four years old.
With our last coach I also turned the charger off. for a month in Yuma plugged in. We had four six volt interstate golf cart batts and 280 watts solar. It did fine also. Both coaches had LED bulbs.
I might be a special case since my marine refrigerator runs on 12VDC only. I use both so long as the refrigerator is running. Storage would be another matter.
If on shore power, we shut the solar off. The coach is covered at home so solar is not an option.
Pierce
B - solar and inverter/charger on all the time. Don't see any reason to turn anything off. If all the batteries are fully charged, then neither of the chargers are doing anything but "maintaining". I let
them work out who does what. Batteries seem to be happy all the time. I'm not damaging anything by leaving the solar turned on, even if it is not doing anything.
I asked on the Forum about when our coach is parked long-term in our driveway...if I should let the solar take care of the batteries. From the answers, I determined the problem with that is our residential fridge. It pulls the batteries down each night, then the solar recharges them each day. That's fine, except it is "wearing out" the batteries for no reason. Your batteries only have a limited number of discharge/recharge cycles before they die. I want to save our battery "life" for when we are traveling, so when at home I keep them fully charged with the inverter/charger.
Chuck I tend to agree with you on the cycling issue by using solar only. I'm just curious who does what.
I use solar even when plugged in, UNLESS, cloudy or rainy, limits available solar. I seldom use the converter for charging.
I have 1600 watts of panels and an 80 amp Outback Controller.
I cycle about 200 times per year and my Gel batteries lasted 11 years, AGM batteries only lasted 5 years - I was disappointed because I was told by Lifeline that their super duper AGM batteries would perform like a Gel.
I have the OEM fridge.
Bruce, AGM battery's life cycle count varies with the depth of discharge. You will get many more shallow discharges than deep ones. It is also easier to bring them back up to a full charge after a shallow discharge which as I understand it is what you want to do.
I am at 6+ years on my 3-8D lifelines, they are showing their age but still OK. Definately not as strong as when they were new.