Earlier today (Saturday, 3 November) we had one of our biggest panics yet. We had no power. Our system completely shut off. What the heck happened?!
Last night, we were all prepared to get on the road in the morning and be on our way south. We planed on leaving Ellerbe, North Carolina, having spent a week visiting family. And then, in the wee hours of the morning, our battery monitor sounded.
This tone was alerting us that our batteries had low voltage. In other words, instead of being in the 12 to 14-volt range, it had dropped to 11-volts. This was the lowest voltage our batteries had seen yet. In fact, we had never seen it lower than 12-volts before. And, this was actually the first time our battery monitor had sounded alerting us about low voltage.
We thought we had taken care of it, and went back to sleep. We woke up a bit later at a reasonable time only to find we had no power. What happened now?! Orsuré then moved ShaVanda into direct sunlight so that hopefully our solar panel could quickly charge up our batteries. When the alarm sounded, the battery monitor had read around 11-volts, but when we woke up to the dead system the monitor read 10.4-volts. Wait, what?! Hopefully the solar energy from our panel will quickly fix the problem.
The past three or four nights we hadn't plugged ShaVanda into an alternating current outlet. We had decided to experiment. We had had no issue until this morning. The only thing that was different this past night was us trying out our "power saver mode" on our Aims Inverter-Charger. The power saver mode puts the inverter-charger to a sleep state until it senses a significant power draw. The power draw then wakes up the inverter-charger to its "on" mode.
You'd think this would be a great feature to save power, hence the name, and it may be, but what we had been doing saves even more power. We physically turn off the inverter-charger whenever we aren't using it. This way we don't use any extra power than absolutely necessary. Even when a device is "sleeping" it is still technically "on" and using power, albeit a reduced amount. Turning the device "off" is the only way to completely stop any power usage. So, our theory is that our voltage had dropped so much lower than it had ever done before as a result of the constant power drain by the power saver sleep mode of the inverter-charger.
In one of our many conversations with the company Battle Born Batteries asking for advice and help with our battery system, we had been warned about low voltage. We learned that, even though the batteries could be drained to 0-amps and havr no issue recharging, if the voltage dropped to about 10-volts the batteries themselves would go to sleep and could only wake with a specific jump starter designed for lithium-ion-phosphate batteries. We also learned that this jump starter device is a pretty penny, and that there was a second, more affordable option. We could install a battery guard device that would shut off power to our other devices to protect the batteries from going to sleep. Needless to say, we went with this option. So, now, attached to our battery system we have a battery monitor that monitors the charge and voltage of our batteries, a battery guard that shuts off power to our devices if the voltage gets too low, and many other things we'll likely talk about in future journals.
The battery guard device arrived a couple of days before we left Poulsbo, Washington, and the accompanying directions were not clear at all. We went online to see if we could find more and what we found wasn't more helpful. What we could make out was that if the voltage reached less than 10.5-volts for two minutes the battery guard will switch to its off position to protect the batteries.
We decided to take our chances and not install it right away as we were pretty confused in how to install the battery guard. We ended up not installing the device until we reached Green Bay, Wisconsin, about a month into our travels with the help of Orsuré's cousin. And so, now we're about two months into our travels and now we have a major problem. Our battery system is off and not turning back on.
As we began trying to figure out how to both charge our batteries and increase our battery voltage, the Bluetooth phone app for our solar charge controller showed that our solar panel was producing power. Almost all of the time this has meant that the batteries were in fact charging. However, sometimes we have noticed that the battery monitor continued to read the same charge percentage even as the solar panel was theoretically charging the batteries. This morning was one of those times. About an hour into sitting in direct sunlight, the battery monitor continued to read a charge of 52%, the same charge percentage it read when we first noticed our system had no power. What's going on?
We had "fixed" this problem by unplugging the battery monitor and plugging it back in. After doing so it would read that the batteries were actually at 100%, full charge. This means that the solar panel had actually charged up our batteries. Wow, that's fun... What if the batteries are actually at the lower charge and when we unplug and replug in the battery monitor it resets or trips the monitor to a false reading of a 100% charge? Let's push that thought to the side for now.
As ShaVanda sits in the sun we watched the battery monitor remain at the 52% charge, but the battery voltage level has increased. No longer below 10.5-volts, it has risen - passed 11 volts, 11.5, and even higher than 12-volts. Why is the charge percentage remaining the same if the voltage is increasing? And yet, we still have no power. Our lights, our fridge, everything remains shut off.
A few possible reasons. 1. Either our battery guard is still switched off, and it hasn't switched back on because the voltage is still too low. 2. The battery guard hasn't switched back on because it is broken, or we had installed it incorrectly. Or, 3. This has nothing to do with the battery guard and the batteries themselves have gone to sleep. If it's the third option, we are sh**-out-of-luck because we don't have the jump start device to wake them up. And, to make matters worse, it's Saturday and both the company that makes the batteries and the company that makes the battery guard device are closed until Monday morning. What are we going to do?!
Now, that panic is beginning to set in. We decided to try to, in this order: 1. plugging into an alternating current, and maybe, just maybe, this would jump the batteries, and if that doesn't work; then, 2. taking the cables from the battery guard apart to "trip" the guard to turn on. The first didn't work. The second didn't work. ... But, when we took the cables off, we touched the cable wire connected to our devices directly to the positive battery terminal. Low and behold the devices have turned on. Yay! The batteries are not asleep. They didn't get too low a voltage to shut off. This is really good news. So, this means that the actual reason why things aren't working is because of the battery guard.
Instead of remaining panicked, we decided that we'd run to the store in the nearby city. We needed to get some things we needed before our electrical system had shut off anyway. And, while in the bigger city we figured we'd try to find an auto or stereo company who might be able to help us figure out how to make our battery guard switch on to allow power to flow through. So, before heading out, I reattached everything to the battery guard. Then, we got going and on to the neighboring city.
On our way to the store, we decided Orsuré would run in get what we needed and I would try one last thing to our battery guard. When we get to the store, Orsuré ran in and I started getting things ready to detach the battery guard. I got down and was just about to loosen a bolt, and I hear the quiet hum of the fridge. What?! The fridge has power?! I tried the lights. They turn on! I tried the ceiling vent fan. It runs! Our system is back on!!
I then check the battery monitor. It still reads 52%. But this time the voltage reads 13.22-volts. Maybe the magic number for the battery guard to turn back on is 13.2-volts? Either way, the battery guard had switched itself over to allow our devices to draw power from our batteries. Great news!
Orsuré is now back from the store. I share with him the good news! We both are in disbelief and relieved at the same time. ... The only thing now is that our battery monitor is still reading that our batteries are at a 52% charge.
We decide to take the risk of unplugging and replugging in the monitor. Our batteries have before gone down to about a 25% charge and fully recharge after that. So, we're thinking, if when we had unplugged and replugged in the battery monitor it had in fact tripped it to a false 100% charge reading, then our batteries would have at some point died already.
And so, when we do unplug and replug in the battery monitor, the monitor reads that the batteries were actually at a full, 100% charge. We're calling this a win. Our system has power. Our battery guard did it's job. And now, we can relax. We can breath. ... We're thinking the battery monitor has a glitch. We'll take appropriate action to remedy this soon.
Welcome to vanlife and its steep electrical system curve. We continue to learn more about our system.