Overdrawn at the Energy Bank (Again)

[kevin_standlee]

A couple of nights ago, I went out to the Rolling Stone after work and discovered that I'd left one of the RV's interior lights on when I had left that morning, about twelve hours earlier. Plugging in the voltmeter, I could see that the charge in the "coach" battery (as opposed to the one that deals with the engine) was very low. That night, I drove around for a while trying to get the charge back up. Unfortunately, this morning, I awoke to the sound of the low-battery alarm on the CPAP as it shut itself down. (It was almost time for me to get up anyway.)

For a one-week stay, if I start with a full charge and drive a few miles each day, it's usually enough to keep things charged. However, I drained it so badly on Tuesday that it never fully recovered. I'm staying down here tonight as well, so after work but before I lay up for the night I am once more going to have to go out and drive around aimlessly, preferably at full freeway speed to get maximum output from the alternator, in order to recharge the battery enough to run the CPAP overnight.

What I really need is a place I could plug into ground power during the day, and while we have charging stations on our lot for electric cars, we don't have ordinary power outlets into which I could plug the RV, which accepts an ordinary three-prong/110V/15A cord. Oh, there are a couple of them around here, but none convenient to anywhere I could legally park, and I rather expect that the Security people who won't let people park overnight anymore would descend upon me for using one of them anyway. Electric cars are fine. RVs are not.

Comments

[wolf baginski (from livejournal.com)]

I don't know if it would have enough capacity, but when I was driving I had a solar panel gadget that could be connected with one of the cigarette lighter sockets. I am not sure if it really did any good. UK source here, and the spec looks rather inadequate, though prices and power ratings vary a lot.

Solar vehicle battery trickle charger (http://www.halfords.com/workshop-tools/garage-equipment/car-battery-chargers/halfords-solar-battery-maintainer-12v-6w)

That 6W rating is about a half-ampere, but other models go up to about 3x that.

A bigger, more permanent, solar panel might be a long term option. They're getting to be a quite usual feature on the towed caravans that are common here. I used to have an old FFR Land Rover that had two battery circuits fed from a double-winding alternator, one for the engine and one for the military radio equipment it was built to carry. It was really old, and that was maybe the best solution they had in the 1960s.

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

Getting a small solar panel is on the to-do list. We wanted to stop at Camping World in Wilsonville on the Tax Free Tour of Oregon, but ran out of time.

[dalesql.livejournal.com]

Around my area, loading docks and truck parking areas come with power outlets to keep deisel engines warm and batteries topped off in the wintertime.
Might want to investigate truck stops around your area to see if they rent overnight parking spots with power services when this situation comes up. Some of them have a full service thing that fits into the passenger side window that has power outlets, air conditioning, internet service and so on. No idea what the costs would be though. These are more and more common in the states with no idling laws for trucks.

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

Well, the whole point of my nomadic existence out of the RV is not having to pay to park anywhere for the night. In any event, experience shows that for an ordinary stay of a week or less, small amounts of driving around are sufficient for me. I just can't leave an interior light on all day long like I did my mistake this past week.