AGM Batt Report

Adventure Location: Rockport, Texas

The new batts are doing very well.  The previous batts had a rating of 220 amp hours at 12 volt.  They performed extremely well in my opinion. It was easy to get five days of use from a single charge on them.  In the nearly two years they were in service, they never got down to half of the usable charge gone.  The panels did enough even in the rain and clouds to keep the Castle well supplied with power.

The new batts are rated at 200 amp hours at 12 volt.  So we are looking at a 10 percent drop in initial capacity.  It seemed a good trade for the lack of acid drips and putting the batts inside the Castle.  The days are shorter now and the lights get used for a bit in the mornings and a lot longer at night than the other batts were seeing lately.

The AGM batts were very low at 12.2+/- when they were installed.  The gray weather was not giving them a chance to get to full charge the first two days. The voltage was running down to the 12.3 level each night before the panels got started charging in the morning.

Since then we had a couple of full sun days and the panels got the batts up to full charge.  This morning was typical of the last days. The voltage was 12.61 volts when I got out of bed this morning and last night was a late night of lighting use.  It appears that the new batts will be way more than adequate for boondocking even with some gray days thrown in the mess.

Now we will have to wait about two years to see how the durability is with these batts.  It is certain that having good batts and charging ability will make it easier to try to have tooooo much fun. TheOFM.