isolator charging while stealthing, water use, appointments, etc

the alternator v. solar charging mix

I talk about alternator+solar charging often on reddit, and often remark that for me the mix is something like 95% solar and 5% alternator. Let’s do the math to see how far off I was.

Assumptions:

• we are only talking about battery charging, not powering other loads
• when stealth camping I drive about 20mins a day: 10 in the morning (20A) and 10 in the evening (~10A, due to higher battery voltage)
• when boondocking I drive about 120mins every two weeks: 1 hour of reprovisioning and 1 hour of relocation
• in winter I need to replace ~55Ah to get to 100% the next day

while boondocking

calculated for a 14d period

• reprovisioning/relocation 40Ah, 5.2%
• solar 770Ah 94.8%

So my gut was fairly close for my normal boondocking. But I am stealthing for a couple months late this year. How different will it be?

while stealth camping

calculated daily

• morning drive 3.4Ah 6.18%
• evening drive 1.7Ah 3.1%
• solar 49.9Ah 90.7%

The alternator is playing a slightly bigger role than I expected. Interesting.

alt numbers may be misleading

This is a little misleading, since the solar would have charged the battery later on in the day in most cases. But since I relo in mornings usuall the alternator gets to chip in and “robs” the solar of the opportunity to make the full pull. Exception: relo on bad weather days, where the alt really might be making power the solar could not. I do try to relo on crappy days like that if practical for that reason.

water use

My tank only had ~3gals in it before I refilled yesterday. I thought “why am I using so much water” then realized it’d been 28 days!

appointments

I still have three medical appts in ELP that should be completed in Dec: optical followup, blood labs, and intake/annual. The optical got pushed back to the 22nd (doctor changed workdays) but everything else is holding steady.

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