After a few months of running my DIY lithium battery I thought I’d provide an update on it. We used the battery on our 5+ week trip out west, recharging it only via solar. In a few parks we had little to no sunlight during the day (Olympic National Park…
In part 2 I talked about my basic 12V setup and how I was top-balancing my new battery cells. I didn’t get into why to top-balance, but there’s an excellent explanation in the DIY Solar Forum – basically each cell is independent and we’re trying to equalize them and maximize…
In my earlier post, I talked about what LiFePO4 batteries were and why I went with them. In this article I’ll cover how I built mine, which should allow most savvy DIYers to more or less repeat the process, building on what I learned. Most of what I learned about…
Our camper (travel trailer) has a typical 12V lead acid battery to run most of the devices. Solar does a decent job of keeping the battery topped up, but sometimes we end up in a campsite with a lot of shade and have been finding it increasingly hard to keep…
In an effort to keep this blog more technically focused, also to encourage my kids to write blog entries, all of the trips and travel are moving to a new domains at http://driventoexplore.org/.
The last two summers we’ve done road trips out west, and this year we hooked up the new trailer and went for round three. Christi wanted to visit Mesa Verde and New Mexico, and I wanted to go four wheeling with the 200 LCDC group again, so from there we…