Battery bank info.

Hello Michael,

your 6B&S wire is more than adequate.

Your solar panels are good for about 50Ah per day, so you have to find an extra 30Ah to satisfy your daily load requirement.
Yes you can use two solar systems (panel plus regulator) working on the same battery bank.

Yes you can leave gennie at home, if you're going to use the alternator to charge your batteries for 30 minutes every morning. Less if it's a sunny day, more if it's overcast.
Check the battery voltage at 2 pm by which time it should have reached 14.4V.
If not, increase the alternator bulk charging incrementally (say in 10 minute steps) every morning until you hit this voltage/time window.

cheers, Peter

Michael

Without going into calculating daily usage and all that, wow you have heaps of batteries!
We (family of 5) can camp for a week with only two AGM batteries in the CT, and 120W solar. And yes we do have high power usage as we have an 80l weaco which we use as fridge/freezer. with five people opening it regularly.
Mate you have many batteries but only at 65Ah. Pity you couldn't upgrade those to a 90Ah or higher, then youd be laughing
But surely if you are wise on power (packing in new drinks into the fridge in the morning when the drinks are already cooler, etc) and having that "spare"connected to your alternator for when you take a sightsee drive, surely you'd be fine.
Avoid the generator, all that extra weight and carrying petrol specially if you have a diesel car.

Michael you are silent on having a duel battery setup in your car; If you don't then this would be my very first step; It also then provides an alternative battery source to connect lights onto so you don't put all the load onto the CT bank

Cheers
CJ

Crikey..how did we ever survive on a single 120a battery and two 60 watt solar panels for two years? It's not for me to tell you how to travel or what to leave home..but make sure you do turn off all the lights and electronic comforts of home you are carrying and just enjoy the night time outback ambiance and stars and silence.

Michael, the longest stretch we did with out an external power supply/top up was 20 consecutive days and regularly did 14/15 days bush.Used gas for cooking, showering, etc.
Our system ran lights, TV, inverter, 2 laptops, phones etc....and we had normal kitchen appliances and other luxuries including aircon etc and the obligatory hair dryer !! for when we were in powered campsites. We just didn't see the need to run all these all the time...after all one of the points of camping is to get away from civilization and it's mod cons and enjoy a simpler lifestyle. Cheers

Michael,

All sounds good to me. Lots of storage and lots of solar, good heavy wiring.

I'd query your 80 Ah per day calculation though. We don't use more than about half that. The fridge is the big load, and accounts for about 2/3 of daily demand. We don't stint on lighting (halogen), laptop, charging torch etc batteries. If you are running a big fridge, or running it as a freezer, or 2 fridges then you would obviously use more than we do, but I doubt that you would get up to 80 Ah even then.

I think I'd leave the gennie at home but carry a few metres of 6 B&S (or 8B&S if it's not too long) twin cable to temporarily link your battery bank in parallel with the cranking battery, as Peter suggests, for a while if the sun doesn't shine enough. Much easier to use the generator that's under the bonnet than to carry a separate one!

Cheers

John