Question up to a 12V Guru

Possibly one item that the guru may love to deal with is the addition of the caravan that is second to a preexisting caravan 12V system that presently has only one home battery pack. Just just What shall we start thinking about whenever evaluating the ability to accept the extra battery pack, choosing the brand new battery pack, as well as the fitting and wiring? For guide caravan, may a Jayco is suggested by me Silverline?

All the best, Bob Murray

12V Guru answers

Thank you for your concern. Numerous RVers find one battery is not adequate to service their needs, particularly on a van such as for instance a Silverline where there are numerous devices.

Get in on the batteries in parallel

To own a two battery pack set-up, you need to join the batteries in ‘parallel’ in which the positive terminals are linked together basically aided by the negative. Utilize thick cable such as 8.4mm2 (AWG 8) and quality battery lugs. a configuration that is parallel the capability of the system in Amps and keeps the nominal voltage at 12V DC, which will be exactly what your van needs. Therefore, two 12V 100Ah batteries joined up with in this way offers you 200Ah capacity at 12V.

Maximise the worthiness of the big system

To increase the worthiness whenever installing a more substantial system, make sure you have actually two batteries associated with the chemistry that is same age and work out. Various battery pack chemistries such as for example AGM, gel, calcium have different charging voltage needs and also you could not obtain the two batteries correctly charged to behave as you. Likewise , a deep period battery in parallel with a starter (cranking) battery pack are affected as you will find construction distinctions internally within these batteries.

Batteries naturally degrade in the long run and their capacity reduces, so a mature battery pack with a brand new one will likely not offer optimum performance. Aligning these facets will let the battery to operate as you big bank along with cells into the exact same condition.

Failing that, a battery that is unbalanced may cause the batteries or their interior cells to not get a straight number of the existing as a result of the various internal resistance, which leads to various areas of the battery pack bank receiving different quantities of current. For instance, a bank composed of a battery that is three-year-old with age and brand brand new a battery won’t fee evenly over the different stages of asking. Which means state of fee (SOC) will be different whether or not the brand new battery is exactly the same brand name and chemistry.

Therefore simply speaking, to upgrade your battery pack system to a higher capacity that is amp would be most useful to purchase 2 to 3 brand new batteries of the identical brand name and chemistry, utilize the weightier quality cable, fuse accordingly and make sure your charger is with the capacity of fulfilling your requirements. To make certain the new battery bank will be effective at being completely charged consider a DC-DC charger or the addition of a solar setup.

Lithium setup option

Needless to say, there’s always a choice of updating the body towards the latest Lithium setup Jayco has simply released, which will imply that with only 1 battery you might have twice as much Amp capacity, longer life, not even half the extra weight and a shorter recharging time—but it comes down at a high price!