Hi Richard, The plan is to add a second battery pretty soon for sure. The solar panel for me is just adding drag for not very much gain. I will look into it, but like I said it is not something very appealing for me, how big does the panel need to be and will it take the vibration from the driving around? At the moment I do have a durite split charge relay that connects the vehicle battery to the deep cycle battery only when the van is running. My inverter is a British made 1800W quasi from Sterling power which also do some very nice DC to DC chargers. They are just a bit expensive for me at the moment. Thanks Luis On 3 Sep 2014 09:33, "Richard R. Pope" wrote: > Luis, > Now I understand. I would recommend adding a second deep discharge > battery in parallel with the first one. this will double your amp hours. > I would also recommend that you seriously consider adding the solar > cells. At least during the day they will add to the charge in the > batteries. You can mount the solar panel on the roof of the van. > Do you have a cut off device between this battery and the car > battery? If not you want to add such a device so that the deep discharge > battery is disconnected from the vehicle system except when the van is > running. This is very important as the battery that runs the van is not > designed to be run down. The cut off is wired so that when you start the > van up and it is running the accessory battery as I will now call it is > then connected to the alternator for charging purposes. Yes you will > need some type of charging system running off of the mains as you aren't > driving long enough to completely recharge your accessory battery under > all circumstances. > I hope that this helps. > Thanks, > rich! > BTW: I did something like this for my motorhome many years ago. > rich! > > On 9/3/2014 3:07 AM, Luis Moreira wrote: > > Hi Richard, > > This is what I am doing: > > > > www.lmtronics.co.uk > > > > I now have a 110Ah Trojan deep cycle battery. I guess that the bigger a= nd > > nastier load will be the fuel removal pumps. I also run the soldering > > station and the soldering iron, but this id not going to be a continuou= s > > thing. Jobs last around 1 hour, and there is travelling time involved > > before and after. > > The key cutting machines are not very power hungry and only used for > about > > a couple of minutes at the time. > > Best Regards > > Luis > > On 3 Sep 2014 06:50, "Richard R. Pope" wrote: > > > >> Luis, > >> A 2007 vehicle even driven 45 minutes in one direction should be > >> plenty of time to recharge the battery under normal circumstances. Wha= t > >> are you using your van for? Are you using the van's battery to operate > >> any additional equipment? Do you have a secondary battery? > >> Thanks, > >> rich! > >> > >> On 9/2/2014 11:53 PM, Luis Moreira wrote: > >> > > -- > http://www.piclist.com/techref/piclist PIC/SX FAQ & list archive > View/change your membership options at > http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist > --=20 http://www.piclist.com/techref/piclist PIC/SX FAQ & list archive View/change your membership options at http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist .