Goal zero, or other comparable systems

[67cj5]

All of the loads are mentioned. No fridge or cooler.
Battery is two years old. Interstate group 24.
140 RC and I think was 660 CCA. Stored indoors during winter. Never been recharged with anything faster/larger than 2amp. Usually recharged by the converter, and the trailer is left plugged into shore power when at home during the summer.

Ok well you must have some kind of parasitic drain going on somewhere,

Here's what you need to do, 1st turn everything off in the normal way as you always have done and then take off the earth / Negative lead and and set a multimeter to the 10 Amp setting and then place one lead on the Negative lead and then put the other lead of the multimeter on to the battery post and then you should get a reading of either + or - with the amount of power being drained from the battery, It does not matter which battery lead you use or which way round you have the multi meter leads because it will still give you a reading But what ever the numbers are that is the amount of power being used by the Parasitic load,

Either that or you have a short in the system because you have looked after your battery really well so there can't be a fault there and None of the Items you are using are powerful enough to drain out your battery, So give that test a go and lets us know what you find Ok,

Good Luck.

 

[Bear in NM]

Why won't 300w of panels charge it, each 160w panel can put out 112 Ah per day in the height of summer and in the worst winter condition they put out 8Ah per day Each, So that's 224Ah in summer and 16Ah in winter, So on an average day they should be able to keep up with that battery even more so being lithium because of their willingness to except charging better than any other type of battery.

I have 270 watts of panels on top of my van, with 160 (2x80) AGM house batteries. Running a 64q ARB and misc. led lights and small charging, I have no issues in the summer floating by mid-morning. This also kept up last November on a hunt for 5 days when I had some fog and cloudy weather. I did 5 days a couple of weeks ago, same everything but added about 5 hours of charging my e-bike, 750 watts and around 8 amps converted to AC. Big load test for me. When I arrived back at my house, I checked total AH's in and out, and I was very much in the positive. But, I had great NM summer sun for this last trip.

No way I would feel comfortable trying to live full time with 270w/160ah, but it seems to be working for me for outings.

Craig

 

[67cj5]

I have 270 watts of panels on top of my van, with 160 (2x80) AGM house batteries. Running a 64q ARB and misc. led lights and small charging, I have no issues in the summer floating by mid-morning. This also kept up last November on a hunt for 5 days when I had some fog and cloudy weather. I did 5 days a couple of weeks ago, same everything but added about 5 hours of charging my e-bike, 750 watts and around 8 amps converted to AC. Big load test for me. When I arrived back at my house, I checked total AH's in and out, and I was very much in the positive. But, I had great NM summer sun for this last trip.

No way I would feel comfortable trying to live full time with 270w/160ah, but it seems to be working for me for outings.

Craig

In your situation I would run 2 separate banks of what you have because while one set of 270w/160AGMah was charging I could use the other bank and vice versa, But also It might be worth adding an extra 80ah battery per bank which would stretch out your power reserve for a couple of extra days,

 

[Bear in NM]

67,

If not charging my new e-bike, what I have is working very well, so far. As to the e-bike charging, the tests I ran were early in the morning, before I had real solar amps, to see if I knew it was going to be sunny, would my bank recover, It did. I also have my 70ah solar suitcase that I could throw in, which ran my base load just fine with a 135 watt panel, for a summer of camping. I have a 100 watt Goal Zero portable, and about 51 watts of additional GZ panels with my suitcase. I can run everything together, or separate.

When my current house batteries die, I will probably up my AH's. Right now I am running a Morningstar Sun Saver Duo, to split my charging between my house bank and starter's. My van uses two starting batteries, and being a diesel, I have to really pay attention to them. So my system is working pretty well, for my needs. I do not have to deploy my third panel, and the setup takes care of my batteries without having to futz, fuss and stress.

Craig

 

[67cj5]

Yeah Craig sounds good, But one thing to remember is if you link them all together the bigger panels drop their output to that of the lowest wattage panel is, for some reason you just can't link them all together and get that amount of watts that each panel is rated at, which is a pain. Which is why everyone says about matching your panels as we do with matching our batteries,

 

[Bear in NM]

67, Yes, clear on that. My two 135's are twins, and my GZ100 is little bit of a degrade. But I can put them all in parallel, or disconnect my two 135s and run my 100 out to the sun. My entire design, from day one of building my "yeti-ish" portable to my current van config has been about flexibility over absolute efficiency.

Craig

 

[Grassland]

Is there a go to list for building a poor man Yeti?
At this point, with what little more reading ive had a chance to do, Im looking for a portable power pack that can:
a) recharge iphone/onePlus phones and other USB devices like flashlights
b)be recharged by shore power aka 120V AC, as well as 12 V DC via vehicle, and via solar, without having to invest in a but load of proprietary connectors or charge controllers etc
c) have some low output LED area lighting

d) run a 12 V fridge for a long weekend, maybe. Not really planning a 12 V fridge until we have a new camper, and that camper would have this in mind already, so capacity isn't critical. But if it doesn't cost much more to bump capacity to do this, then might as well?

Kind of want this to be portable, and also usable as a shelter in place emergency power supply. So this probably means lithium iron phosphate. My wallet says a lead acid battery, but my back, and probably my wife disagree.

Its embarrassing to admit how little DC theory I have retained since trade school.

 

[john61ct]

The fridge is like 50x or more Ah required compared to the rest put together, so dropping that requirement will lower costs and make it more portable.

 

[john61ct]

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