Battery Usage - For what it's worth

webers3

First time camping full week in our 320s without hook-ups and had no idea how to estimate the battery usage and avoid going below the 50% charge level, so we used the battery very sparingly, we are still in the tent camping mode, so our electrical requirements were very low:

Recharging 2 phones averaging 1 full recharge per day (10 to 100%)

Running water pump 5 min per day

Alde for about 20 min on two occasions to heat-up water

Alde for 6 hours to maintain 70F on a chilly night

Rare use of interior lights, maybe 15 min total per week

There was 2.2-watt usage with everything turned off, not sure why, the only thing I could think of was the propane leak detector so during the day when we were away, I disconnected the battery via the battery disconnect to limit the battery drain.

The inexpensive battery monitor I used showed we used 327 watt-hours from the stock 80Ah, or 960Wh battery, which still left 153Wh till 50% at the end of 7 days, if my calculations are correct.

Is this reasonable from your experience?

Any comments would be appreciated, I am trying to estimate what power solar panels I should look into considering our mode of camping. I am sure the electricity needs will increase as we camp into the fall, cooler temps and more frequent use of Alde, we were lucky the weather was cool so we didn’t have to run the fan, I am sure it alone would drain the battery very quick.

pthomas745

The water pump will use about 2 amps an hour.  So, you barely used an amp there.  The interior lights use about a tenth of an amp per hour.  The Alde about a half an amp per hour.

The amp use with nothing being used is called parasitic drain.  The safety things (propane/gas detector you mentioned are one part of that, and so are the drains from the Jensen and TV.

If that is all you are going to use, you don't even need panels!  But, as you get more used to things, you will find more comfort levels with using the fan, etc.  Read over the famous jkjenn blog and have a look at her spreadsheet that describes what item uses how much power.

There are a couple more power use spreadsheets in the Forums, too. 

https://jenngrover.com/2015/11/guilty-as-charged-rv-battery-use-management/