{"id":22134,"date":"2013-02-15T19:04:28","date_gmt":"2013-02-16T01:04:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/travelswithmiranda.uskeba.ca\/?p=18416"},"modified":"2016-09-19T17:57:48","modified_gmt":"2016-09-19T14:57:48","slug":"so-the-new-solenoid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/so-the-new-solenoid\/","title":{"rendered":"So… The New Solenoid"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is what Harold Barre has to say about using an engine alternator to charge an RV house battery on page 112 of Managing 12 Volts<\/a>:<\/p>\n

… If your house batteries are discharged to at least 50 percent of charge, the standard alternator charges your battery with about 15-20 amps until the batteries approach full charger. … You want to run the engine until the alternator output drops to about 7 or 8 amps; at this point it does not produce enough amperage to make running the engine worth while.<\/em><\/p>\n

Keeping that in mind as well as the fact that my batteries are at about 98% right now, I am quite satisfied that as soon as I turned on the engine to Miranda tonight, voltage in the house leaped from 12.55V to 14.04V and I had 6.5A coming in. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

It definitely wouldn’t be worth running the engine for two hours a day to get 12A in, but on a grey day it would be worth running the engine that long to get the 14.04V to print, charge the computers, or do whatever AC I can and want to do through my inverter.<\/p>\n

We’ve got a grey spell ahead, so I just may let my batteries get a little lower than comfortable to see if I do get more amps when my batteries are further discharged.<\/p>\n

It will also be interesting to see how much charge my batteries get while I am driving.<\/p>\n

For the curious, I’ve got about 12.27V showing and I have on two LED lights, the fridge (on propane, which still needs a little DC since a modern one *g*), the whole house inverter, the UPS in the study, and three external drives. Total amps going out: 3.85. Hours till the battery is fully discharged: 35, meaning I could run like this for 21 hours.<\/p>\n

Last but not least, I get a slightly less (and I do mean slightly) jaw dropping voltage drop when I charge the computer through the factory-installed outlet in the living room, so I will be using that one until I can hard wire in a new one in the study.<\/p>\n

I really was ready to throw in the electrical towel, but the profound satisfaction I feel tonight makes the frustration worthwhile.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is what Harold Barre has to say about using an engine alternator to charge an RV house battery on page 112 of Managing 12 Volts: … If your house batteries are discharged to at least 50 percent of charge, the standard alternator charges your battery with about 15-20 amps until the batteries approach full […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1242,635,5,1039,3,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22134","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-magnolia-beach","category-north-america","category-rving","category-texas","category-travel","category-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22134","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22134"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22134\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22134"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22134"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22134"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}