Well, my battery happiness was short lived. 🙁 I hope that some of you are being entertained by the ups and downs of the electrical saga…

Last night, after dark, I shut down everything and watched a movie for a few hours. All I had on was the fridge, which draws about half an amp. No light, no computer. My battery monitor claimed that I was at 98% capacity in terms of amps available to me, but after two hours of resting, my batteries registered 12.3V, or 70% capacity.

I emailed Andy Baird to ask him what he thinks and he says that he hasn’t looked at voltage in years, relying only on his monitor, which has proven its worth. He reminded me that voltage fluctuates wildly depending on what you’re using and that it’s practically impossible to know the state of charge of batteries using voltage. So I should stop driving myself crazy looking at voltage readings. I thought I’d feel better, but I didn’t.

I awoke this morning to a battery monitor that says I should be at 96%, but voltage was just 12.0V or 45%!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I’m charging the laptop right now while using it and my voltage has dipped down to about 10.5V and the laptop is going to take FOREVER to charge. I can’t even put a light on or the fridge cuts out.

These numbers have so shocked me that I went outside both last night and this morning with a flashlight to recheck all my connections. Everything is fine on that end.

My best guess is that I have already ruined my brand new batteries causing them to not hold a charge, which is likely combined with them probably not being truly charged after all yesterday.

I’m done. That’s it, the towel’s on the floor. Everything is hooked up properly so I’m done troubleshooting and tweaking and whatever else and I declare the batteries the winners. Congratulations, guys, you put up a good fight.

I thought Croft would appreciate a picture of the treat R&S gave me tonight!

This is locally caught red snapper that was smoked by a friend of R&S. It is DIVINE. It’s like candy! I’m enjoying it with Triscuits, and, find of the day, I had a jar of giant gherkins tucked in my emergency pickle reserves cabinet. Yum!

I returned the genset last night and then was invited in for a glass of wine. Okay. Two glasses of wine and a beer. We gabbed and I didn’t get in until about 11:00, which is late for my routine here. I went to bed immediately and was wide awake at 7:00.

The first thing I wanted to do this morning was rewire my battery bank, yet again, because comments yesterday made me realise I had it wired completely wrong. I got all comfy, prepared to twist myself into a pretzel, followed the wiring… and discovered that I might be forgetful, but I’m not an idiot. Yes, everything was wired correctly and I used the correct fuse and shunt posts to recharge with both the truck and the genset. So my apologies to everyone who tried to come to my rescue yesterday. But isn’t it any wonder that I doubted myself when so much has gone wrong with this project?!

My battery bank is FINALLY working perfectly. It’s time to spend a few days without opening the dang compartment!

Thanks to my evening yesterday, I’m starting today with a full charge on both laptops. The plan is to just let the house batteries charge all morning and into the afternoon. I really do think I will get a full charge today. I know I’ve said that before, but I woke up to 12.5V, so it really shouldn’t be that hard to get me back over 12.6 if I’m not charging the laptops at the same time. Other mornings that I thought I’d get to a full charge I woke up to 12.3 and would have gotten a full charge if I hadn’t been running the computers.

It looks like we are going to get sun today after all. Yaaaaaaay.