When do you recharge?

[Squatch]

It is important to monitor your camper battery's state of charge but there is no simple "gas gauge" way to know how full your battery is like there is for your truck's gas tank.

Sure there is! It's called a Bogart Trimetric and SC2030 combo that's properly programed for the batteries you are using.

Far more accurate than most gas gauges.

My solar has no issues maintaining float charge. If the roof top panel needs occasional help I'll plug in my portable panel as well.

I don't have shore power and don't need it. I haven't even bothered to hook the camper to the truck battery. My fridge runs for months at a time. Usually have full charge by lunchtime!

 

[Vic Harder]

I noticed today while driving back from a 5 day trip that solar and alternator work quite well in sync. What I saw was that when driving though a cloudy stretch of road, the alternator was putting about 10A into the camper batteries (98% SOC at the time). Then, when in the sun, the PV panels took over, and were putting the 10A into the camper batteries, and little or no current was flowing from the alternator to the camper batteries. Neat.

Once the camper batteries were full up (100% SOC) then the PV panels started charging the truck batteries! I may be just lucky, but the PV array puts out just a tad more volts than the alternator, so current tends to flow towards the truck batts.

Works out super well.