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Left the power on for 24days

Posted: May 18th, 2016, 2:41 pm
by Manitou
Just FYI. I have 3 group 31's. I left the power on while I was gone for 24days. Everything was off except the alarms (stock ones) and the fantastic fan left open. I cranked the temp sensor to the hottest setting. I wanted to leave it open for letting the hot air out naturally, but wanted it to self close for rain. I do have the max air roof cover, so it has to be a really heavy storm to trigger the rain closing sensor. We did get several days of heavy rain on that 24days (trees came down). Returned to a dry interior and still had juice left. I don't know how much since it was almost midnight and I didn't look into how much. (2 bars on the stock idiot light thingie were left)

Re: Left the power on for 24days

Posted: May 18th, 2016, 9:29 pm
by kdarling
Stock 50 watt solar panel?

And in the sunlight, or under cover?

Re: Left the power on for 24days

Posted: May 19th, 2016, 6:25 am
by Manitou
Stock and under the sun. (When it was out.. Lots of overcast days. Seem the solar should have kept the batteries pretty close to full with such a small old, but didn't seem to)

Re: Left the power on for 24days

Posted: May 20th, 2016, 8:24 am
by kdarling
I know, right?

I just added a second 50W panel to the top A/C shroud. (see viewtopic.php?f=8&t=119&p=2724#p2724 ) to try to keep my battery charged.

I did this after reading about how a shadow cast over a single solar cell in a column can effectively remove that entire column from the power output. Therefore, making sure at least one panel was topmost, made sense. Otherwise, the roofline and vent covers etc often cast a shadow on the regular panel.

Even so, the status lights sometimes drop to 3 of the 4 LEDs, especially if there's been a rainy day.

My draws are 1) the TV standby... which I recently disconnected, 2) the CO2 alarm, 3) several remote light controls and one motion detector.