Quote:
Originally Posted by ofdcb
I had the generator going and showed 100% charged with voltage >13.0.
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WHILE CHARGING from the chassis (alternator), generator, or shore power, you cannot tell the state of charge (SOC) of the batteries. The SOC is indicated by the battery unloaded voltage. While you're charging, the voltage is set by the charging source. So ignore the 100% while you are charging.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ofdcb
After turning the generator off and continuing to drive with the inverter on the voltage slowly drops.
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After charging, wait about an hour for the voltage on the battery to be accurate. Before then, it's just surface charge, which will mostly dissipate in an hour or two. So you'll always see the voltage drop after disconnecting. Assuming you have Lifeline batteries, 12.8V is fully charged.
Assuming you have the Sunexplorer solar display, the % of charge on the display is not accurate. The Sunexplorer is calibrated for the wrong type of battery. Go by the voltage. For Lifelines, 12.8V is 100%, 12.5V is 75%, 12.2V is 50%, 11.9V is 25%, and 11.6V or lower is 0%.
After using the generator, the chassis alternator may not charge the batteries until some time has passed. Running the generator turns on the BIM relay, which connects the coach and house batteries. After the generator has been running for a while, the relay turns off. After the relay is off, the chassis alternator will not charge the coach batteries. You'll have to experiment to see how long your BIM relay stays off.
In contrast to Boxster1971's report, my BIM (2014 Interstate) will connect the chassis alternator to charge the coach batteries even when the batteries are higher than 12.6V.