I’ve suspected for some time now that the cable going from the batteries to my converter is much too small. It just isn’t normal for the voltage to drop from 12.6V to less than 11.0 when only a 0.5AH LED light is on!

My converter upgrade confirmed my suspicion. Even though it promised rapid charging, I’ve barely coaxed more than 6AH out of it, more than my last converter but barely.

I didn’t think I made any mistakes with my upgrade (talk about someone’s confidence improving) and so decided to contact the manufacturer for their thoughts on my low charge rate.

The first thing they asked? The gauge and run length of the cable going from the batteries to the converter. Based on my answers (10AWG or 12AWG and about 30′), the charge rate I’m seeing, and the voltage during that charge rate, they said that the charge rate is correct. I should beef up the cabling or move the batteries closer to the converter.

Well, that has lit a fire under my butt on an upgrade I have been avoiding for far too long. This one’s going to be a bitch.

I like the idea of moving the batteries and have toyed with it a number of times. I could put them in the rear driver’s pass through, running the wires straight across to the shore power cable compartment and up to the converter and then on to the generator. I’d have the battery monitor and inverter in the office, very convenient.

The problem here is the solar wiring, gauged for a much shorter run. I would have to completely undo what AM Solar did and move the charge controller to the driver’s side of the rig, which would mean not being able to use the fridge vent as the entrance point for the wires, which would also mess with my combiner box.

Moving other wires and making holes, etc., would be major, too, but the solar relocation is the most daunting part of moving the batteries. Well, that and redistributing the weight on the axles.

The other option is to beef up the wiring going from the batteries to the converter. The issues here are the cost of big gauge wiring, how the heck I’m going to run it through holes made for wiring a quarter of the size I need, and how I’m going to put terminals on everything. I haven’t done the math yet and suspect that I need to go down to at least 4AWG, and I don’t even know if I can tie that into my converter or not. I remember a comment made a while back for a very short run, I could possibly tie my big big gauge wiring to the converter via a smaller gauge ‘jumper’; I need to confirm this.

Tomorrow’s project, now that the laundry has been tamed (but not vanquished), is to follow the entire run of cable from the batteries to the converter to see if it’s one piece or not, the route it follows, and if the route could accommodate a bigger size cable. If so, then I think that going that route rather than moving the batteries would be the best bet.

If money was no object and I could hire a competent electrical team, I would move the batteries, no questions asked. Their location doesn’t make sense at all. But it’s just me, so I’m picking the easiest solution to implement.