Vermillion
New Member
I just swapped in a 100Ah lithium battery for the 80Ah AGM battery that came with our 2-year old Jayco trailer. We have a factory 100-watt Go Power rooftop solar panel and the stock Go Power GP-PWM-30-SQ solar controller.
The system had been working fine (set to AGM), and I haven't paid much attention to the readouts on the controller, other than to see that it usually showed the old battery full to 100 percent capacity by noon or thereabouts on sunny days. During our 14-week trip to Alaska, I know we stressed the old battery a few times by drawing it down further than 50 percent, and after those nights, it took two days to recover to full charge.
I bought the lithium battery to give us a bit more capacity.
I rinsed dust off the solar panel.
I changed the controller setting to LifePO4.
The new battery has been installed for four days now and we've had either full sun or mostly sunny days.
I hoped/expected the battery to reach full charge by now, but it has not.
We haven't used anything electrical in the trailer, it is just sitting in the yard. It does have a carbon monoxide detector and a smoke alarm hard-wired in, so they take current.
The right two of the four bars across the top of the controller readout blink in sequence, but the left two are constantly black/on.
The charge indicator down the left side has shown the three-quarter full icon (bulk or absorption charging, according to the manual) since the moment I hooked up the new battery, and still does.
I haven't yet plugged into shore power, since I wanted to see how the solar would behave, since that's how we mostly camp.
The controller during daylight is showing between 3 and 3.5 Amps, and 13.5 volts consistently.
The third available number (Ah) on the controller has me confused.
I at first assumed this represented the amp hours the solar panel was producing that daily cycle (read that somewhere, now suspect it's wrong).
Late afternoon the first day it showed 25.4Ah. Second day, 20.5Ah. Third day, 22.4Ah. Today, which has been full sun with zero clouds, 21.3Ah.
But the controller instruction manual says the Ah number represents Charged Capacity.
So the new 100Ah battery is only charging up to 20 or 25Ah?
Can anyone educate me on what might be happening?
The system had been working fine (set to AGM), and I haven't paid much attention to the readouts on the controller, other than to see that it usually showed the old battery full to 100 percent capacity by noon or thereabouts on sunny days. During our 14-week trip to Alaska, I know we stressed the old battery a few times by drawing it down further than 50 percent, and after those nights, it took two days to recover to full charge.
I bought the lithium battery to give us a bit more capacity.
I rinsed dust off the solar panel.
I changed the controller setting to LifePO4.
The new battery has been installed for four days now and we've had either full sun or mostly sunny days.
I hoped/expected the battery to reach full charge by now, but it has not.
We haven't used anything electrical in the trailer, it is just sitting in the yard. It does have a carbon monoxide detector and a smoke alarm hard-wired in, so they take current.
The right two of the four bars across the top of the controller readout blink in sequence, but the left two are constantly black/on.
The charge indicator down the left side has shown the three-quarter full icon (bulk or absorption charging, according to the manual) since the moment I hooked up the new battery, and still does.
I haven't yet plugged into shore power, since I wanted to see how the solar would behave, since that's how we mostly camp.
The controller during daylight is showing between 3 and 3.5 Amps, and 13.5 volts consistently.
The third available number (Ah) on the controller has me confused.
I at first assumed this represented the amp hours the solar panel was producing that daily cycle (read that somewhere, now suspect it's wrong).
Late afternoon the first day it showed 25.4Ah. Second day, 20.5Ah. Third day, 22.4Ah. Today, which has been full sun with zero clouds, 21.3Ah.
But the controller instruction manual says the Ah number represents Charged Capacity.
So the new 100Ah battery is only charging up to 20 or 25Ah?
Can anyone educate me on what might be happening?
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