YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY. My battery bank has been operating as I would have expected it to for more than 12 hours now!!!!!!!!!!
Late yesterday afternoon, after some helpful comments by reader Dave, I took the wiring apart again, recleaned with baking soda, applied new gel, and tightened everything. While doing this, I noticed that the connection between the two batteries wasn’t as tight as it could be. That alone could have explained my problems!
Voltage last night never dipped below 12.3, no matter what I was doing, and rested at 12.5 when I had nothing but the fridge and a light on. I had a light on all evening and it would flicker when the water pumped kicked on, but voltage readings remained constant. Just for kicks, I turned on the inverter and vacuumed the hall carpet. No problem. The monitor was correctly registering my usage. When I got up this morning, I was reading 12.5V and no outgoing amps since I was already charging. Perfect!
The computer continues to be an issue and I remain convinced that the problem is not my system. I’m in the truck right now with the engine running waiting for full sun to hit my panels. When that happened yesterday, I was able to get a FULL charge out of my computer while running the whole house inverter and doing other things. My DC charger will be here tomorrow and life should be able to return to normal for me.
Being up early again this morning and not wanting to start the truck that soon, I took my coffee and went for a long walk on the beach. Then, had a pleasant chat with my neighbours who, in part, wanted to let me know they were moving 30 feet down the beach and it had nothing to do with me. How nice of them. 🙂 They commented on how people down here are so much friendlier than folks staying in RV parks in southern BC, something I wholeheartedly agree with.
I want to stay in today and get started on some painting. It’ll be nice to not go anywhere and, at some point, go play in the surf. 🙂
Good to hear! You have had a bunch of us on the edge of our seats!
Maybe it is just me but I am still having trouble understanding the low voltage from your charging brick for the MacBook Pro. All the brick does is convert 120 volts AC to whatever your computer needs. It does not know or care if the 120 comes from a wall socket or an inverter, as long as the voltage is supplied. Maybe if the current draw is so high that it produces a voltage drop on the 12 volt side of the inverter that might affect the 110 output but your battery bank and cable size should eliminate this possibility but the inverter should protect itself from this by shutting down.
I still think it would be a good test to connect an inverter directly to the battery bank with your jumper cables and try charging the MacBook again while monitoring both the 12 and 120 voltages. That loose cable joining the batteries together could have caused all kinds of problems but that is fixed now. I cannot think of any reason this would not work. But then I am not a MacBook guy. 😉