OP Choose your battery wisely and please ignore any recommendation from owners who "purchased a battery last month and it works great."
I have seen some real junk our there recently.


I am often amused by the theories and the "I read it once or a multiple times on Google so it must be true" brigade.

Must be balanced, an integrated BMS will save the world, your battery will die if you charge it below 0°C, the alternator will self destruct without a DC-DC charger inline, the cells must not be used on their side (especially vertical) and the list goes on and on.

7 years ago we started our fulltime travels here in NZ and installed a bare Sinopoly 4 cell 300Ah battery. 800W of solar.
It both starts the 3.9l TD truck often multiple times a day and powers our house behind.
The battery has never required balancing since the original careful top balance. Voltages still remain within 0.02V.
I have tried manually balancing with a 12V 100W bulb but that takes less than 20 seconds at 2 or 3 amps to pull voltages to within 0.001V. Apart from psychological satisfaction what could that possibly achieve for our battery?
No commercial internal "BMS" installed. None could handle the 700A+ peak starter current. No charge source exceeds 14.1V. Victron 20% SOC alarm and 15V HV and 12.1V LV disconnect. Never triggered.
We have safely charged the battery with the case temperature measuring -2°C at <0.1C. It did not die!
The battery has been mounted sideways with the cells vertical for 7 years. It still works.
The truck 100A rated alternator has survived charging the battery direct connected at 70-85A until full without producing any of that often warned of smoke and the certain self destruction.
No generator and the Victron 30A mains battery chargers remains all but unused.

Best of all my annual 30A capacity test a month ago revealed that the battery has lost 14Ah (in layman's terms) down from the original 315Ah to just 301Ah.
We are obviously mistreating it.

Complicate it all as much as you like but in the meantime we will continue to use our setup with the beer cold and the ice creme hard from our also 7 year old Samsung 255l mains fridge.

-- Edited by Scubadoo on Thursday 23rd of December 2021 07:40:06 AM