Trying to understand battery usage - help?!

[chockswahay]

I have found that if the leisure batteries are fully charged then they ‘charge’ the engine battery until parity is reached. This of course won’t happen if the car is not driven OR max charge is selected.

So on a general ‘drive and forget’ basis the entire battery system sits at 80% is capacity. In real terms this means only 30% (45 amps) of the leisure batteries are useable.

The only way round this (excluding solar) is to drive with the max charge permanently selected.

As it happens, I fitted a 100w solar panel 5 weeks ago and the leisure batteries are holding up very well in view of the fact that the fridge is permanently on and the van has been driven very little in that time.

 

[Vinnie]

Is a possible solution to use the fridge intermittently when running on leisure battery and effectively as a cool box (obviously depends what you are trying to keep cold). Would sustain the leisure battery longer. Seems to work for us

 

[Lambeth Cali]

Is a possible solution to use the fridge intermittently when running on leisure battery and effectively as a cool box (obviously depends what you are trying to keep cold). Would sustain the leisure battery longer. Seems to work for us

If you set it to 1 that’s pretty much what you’re doing.

 

[CampervanOwner]

Thank you everyone for all your replies. Much appreciate!

 

[Wannabecamperman]

Thank you everyone for all your replies. Much appreciate!

Solar is your friend. Once you go there, you may wish to do as many (myself included) and start investing in solar generators too, which allow air fryers and hair dryers, etc - all off grid all summer long with just 200w.