Leisure Battery Advice Please (1 Viewer)

SWW

Oct 12, 2010
40
55
Funster No
14,082
I know a lot of you will have experience and advice on leisure batteries. We have an Adria Twin SL registered in 2012, we had a Monbat battery put in nearly 5 years ago and is needing to be replaced. All I can read on the battery is 12v 110ah XLM 110LB, RC 192 mins.
As the van is getting old what is your advice: 2 of the same sort of batteries, lithium, some sort of solar panel to back up whatever battery?As far as I can understand with an older van you can’t just slot in lithium. We use the Van on the Continent so rarely use EHU unless visiting the odd campsite or family driveway.
Thanks for you advice and experience.
 
Apr 27, 2016
6,801
7,840
Manchester
Funster No
42,762
MH
A class Hymer
Exp
Since the 80s
Looking at the ads for this battery, it seems to be a flooded sealed lead-acid deep cycle type of battery. What to replace it with depends a lot on why you are replacing it. If it has always provided for your needs, then another one of the same is a good option.

That battery has a theoretical capacity of 110 amp-hours (Ah) but in real terms would deliver a usable capacity of about 80Ah when new. As it's 5 years old, it's presumably only delivering a fraction of that, say 50Ah.

If you use that 50Ah in one day (ie over a 24-hour period) then you will need about 200W of solar panel to yield that much in one day. A 100W panel will give you about 30Ah, up to 40Ah on a long sunny day. So if the 50Ah normally lasts 2 days, a 100W panel will keep you going indefinitely.

Fitting 2 batteries means you can last longer in a run of bad weather.

So it depends on how many Ah you use in a day, which is lifestyle-dependent and very variable.

If you want to change the battery technology to AGM, Gel or Lithium, you have to make sure the various chargers (mains, solar and alternator/B2B) have suitable charging profiles.
 

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