Internal or external battery

[Ram-lander]

Recently attended PNW Overland Expo last month and was parked next to two rigs using a 12v fridge/freezer. One was using his vehicle battery for power and the other was using a high capacity Goal Zero. Both used their units battery protection features. I’m now thinking of moving up to a fridge/freezer but am looking for advice and/or suggestions on long term battery support, as in staying in a single place for multiple days without driving the rig. I have a ’99 Dodge Ram 2500 diesel quad cab. My current batteries are typical lead acid with CCA and minimal reserve capacity and are both about 4 years old.
Wondering if I should upgrade my onboard batteries to something like a Dakota Lithium dual use 12v 60ah CCA/deep cycle or just AGM/Gel units and getting a solar/converter set up to recharge the onboard batteries or go with a high power stand alone battery pack like Goal Zero or Jackery and solar for charging.
The guy who was using his onboard battery needed to start his rig at least once to recharge his battery. He didn’t have a solar system. The other was fine with his 1500 watt GZ for the 3 days.

 

[loper]

Lithium batteries are pretty much considered the state of the art right now, but they are kind of pricey. Temperature can be a problem too, if you spend time in below freezing weather. Lots of bang for your buck, though. Lighter, and more usable amp hours than AGM or flooded batteries.

We're using two 100ah AGM batteries in our van. We went with AGM because we wanted to mount them inside, so flooded batteries wouldn't be a good idea, and I just couldn't do the expense of lithium right now.

Without using solar, they last about 36 hours before I need to get some charge into them. That's running a 60 liter fridge/freezer, Maxxair fan, intermittent interior lights, and charging camera batteries. Ambient temps were around a high of 90.

With a 220 watt solar panel, pulling the same electrical load, I went from 12.0V (needs charge) to 13.0V (fully charged) in about 4 hours.

At that rate, I think we could stay out indefinitely without starting the engine, as far as battery power goes.

I suggest figuring out your electrical demand and setting up a separate battery/charger/solar to meet it. I don't suggest trying to run camping electrical stuff off your starting battery. Pretty easy to get it wrong, and then you're walking.

 

[Renegade]

Recently attended PNW Overland Expo last month and was parked next to two rigs using a 12v fridge/freezer. One was using his vehicle battery for power and the other was using a high capacity Goal Zero. Both used their units battery protection features. I’m now thinking of moving up to a fridge/freezer but am looking for advice and/or suggestions on long term battery support, as in staying in a single place for multiple days without driving the rig. I have a ’99 Dodge Ram 2500 diesel quad cab. My current batteries are typical lead acid with CCA and minimal reserve capacity and are both about 4 years old.
Wondering if I should upgrade my onboard batteries to something like a Dakota Lithium dual use 12v 60ah CCA/deep cycle or just AGM/Gel units and getting a solar/converter set up to recharge the onboard batteries or go with a high power stand alone battery pack like Goal Zero or Jackery and solar for charging.
The guy who was using his onboard battery needed to start his rig at least once to recharge his battery. He didn’t have a solar system. The other was fine with his 1500 watt GZ for the 3 days.

In my most recent build (LC200) I decided to isolate as much as possible from the factory vehicle. So instead of tying into the vehicle electrical system, I run a large Goal Zero (1500X).

 

[Lief_WJ]

Recently attended PNW Overland Expo last month and was parked next to two rigs using a 12v fridge/freezer. One was using his vehicle battery for power and the other was using a high capacity Goal Zero. Both used their units battery protection features. I’m now thinking of moving up to a fridge/freezer but am looking for advice and/or suggestions on long term battery support, as in staying in a single place for multiple days without driving the rig. I have a ’99 Dodge Ram 2500 diesel quad cab. My current batteries are typical lead acid with CCA and minimal reserve capacity and are both about 4 years old.
Wondering if I should upgrade my onboard batteries to something like a Dakota Lithium dual use 12v 60ah CCA/deep cycle or just AGM/Gel units and getting a solar/converter set up to recharge the onboard batteries or go with a high power stand alone battery pack like Goal Zero or Jackery and solar for charging.
The guy who was using his onboard battery needed to start his rig at least once to recharge his battery. He didn’t have a solar system. The other was fine with his 1500 watt GZ for the 3 days.

I have a deep cycle with solar. I can take it out when I want and did not have to alter my Jeep WJ wiring, which was iffy, in my opinion, since the day it was released from the factory' assembly line (in some cases).
Just my two cents worth.

 

[smritte]

Mine are dedicated with solar but my rig is a dedicated camping vehicle, not my DD. A number of the guys I camp with use portable power units, some with portable solar also and are fine with them. Most of those vehicles are also DD. When I get around to building my Tacoma, I'm not sure which way I'll go.

 

[MOAK]

Mine are dedicated with solar but my rig is a dedicated camping vehicle, not my DD. A number of the guys I camp with use portable power units, some with portable solar also and are fine with them. Most of those vehicles are also DD. When I get around to building my Tacoma, I'm not sure which way I'll go.

I’m in the same camp as you. Dedicated two battery system and solar. If I were using a daily driver I’d seriously consider a portable unit with a solar panel. A lifetime ago a contractor friend of mine advised that my first company pick up truck should be twice as big as I thought I needed, think Ford F-250 . I bought a Ranger. Less than a year later I was shopping for a 250. I think the same to be true of the portable systems. If your math works out to a 100 watt panel & a 70ah battery, it’d be best to double that. Most of us aren’t ready for the lithium battery just yet as they are quite expensive, quite expensive to set up properly and very easy to accidentally destroy. A good friend ruined his 200ah lithium in less than a year. He went back to AGMs.

 

[John and Mandi]

We've run both AGM and Lithium fulltime, we still have the lithium bank in our rig. For a part-time rig we recommend going with AGM. You can piece together a simple system, something like a single AGM, a Victron SmartShunt, a Blue Sea Systems Automatic Charge Relay (ACR) or Battery Link, a single solar panel, a decent MPPT charge controller, and a fuse block. We ran a similar setup from Alaska to Argentina, the battery was installed under our van, and it held up to all of the abuses of fulltime travel and our 12v fridge ran the entire time (except when shipping the rig). AGM is a more of a set it and mostly forget it system. With an ACR or Battery Link (which is also an ACR) the system will automatically keep all of your batteries fully charged, both truck and house, via driving and/or solar. You don't have to start with a full system either. You can start with an AGM and a simple solenoid that will charge both banks when driving then slowly build out the system over time. We too have a diesel and we have idled to help put some power into our house battery on a few occasions when we weren't moving and there wasn't any solar generation. We believe in keeping things simple, a less is more mentality, but adding a fridge does necessitate an electrical system.

Why do we recommend people away from Lithium? It's not as simple as everyone is led to believe. Lithium does not like to fully re-charge every day, there are exceptions but the vast majority of lithium batteries shouldn't be charged past ~88%. It's why our smartphones don't fully recharge every night and we get the message it will fully recharge by 4am every so often. The charging is software controlled to extend the phone's battery life. You can set-up a similar automated system in your vehicle but it starts to get extremely expensive. We installed circuit breaker/switches to manually control our charging when we switched to lithium. Lead batteries prefer to be fully charged all of the time so installing solar with a decent controller that trickle charges will keep them topped up and happy, it really is a mostly set it and forget it system. Sure, through proper management we theoretically can get twenty years out of our lithium. To think we won't be upgrading and changing our components for 20 years is ridiculous. In time, lithium will be more robust and the norm but that day is still in the future. We spent more on our lithium batteries than our entire system as described above, including all of the inline protective fuses and wiring, which lasted 6 years. Knowing what we do now we should have just slapped in a new 200-220 AH AGM and saved a ton of coin.