Hi guy, My house is powered by solar and wind, along with my 31 excella.
Battery voltage is just an "okay"method of determining battery condition.
12.8V is fully charged, 11.7V in nearly dead. A 12V reading is about 25%
capacity. To get a good reading of your battery voltage the battery must
sit about one hour without any load or charging. This is called the float
voltage. If you read the voltage with a load or a charge it is a waste of
your time.

Very important. If a battery goes dead, it can never again regain full
charge capacity once the plates have developed sulfates. Run to the store
and get a solar panel as soon as you possibly can. I have found that
UNISolar has the best performance especially in shaded conditions. I buy
mine from Go Solar or gosolar.com. or 516 727 2224. Good luck! Joe Colao
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> From: Ned Hall <ned.hall@worldnet.att.net>
> To: airstream@airstream.net
> Subject: Re: [a/s] Fulltiming
> Date: Tuesday, April 20, 1999 2:43 PM
>
>
>
> :What have you been charging the batteries with? Running the tow
vehicle?
> :Solar?
>
> Nope, no solar yet...I have been running on the charge the batteries got
> when I towed it out on Wednesday...that's going on five days! All I have
> been running is lights (20 watt halogen), a couple of hours of TV, and the
> fantastic fan when it is hot in the afternoon ... I have two 12 volt deep
> cycle marine batteries, and they are at 11.87 volts as of Tuesday morning.
> This is good, I think...I have had it recommended to run the bats down to
> 10.8 volts on their first cycle. Does anyone know about this "breaking in"
> of a battery?
> :
> :If I were you I would probably get a solar panel(if you don;t have one)...
> :Sherry in Arizona has one that she really likes.
>
> It's on the list....
> :