Why upgrade to Battle Born Batteries
When Sabrina and I were full-timing in our Class A RV, we did so for her work. Sabrina is a Pulmonary/Critical Care physician and does what is known as locum tenens work. We would travel across the country to hospitals that needed the most help. Most of these hospitals were not in the most desirable weather climates. We were typically in the north during the winter and the south in the summer.
We were in Erie, PA, one February, sleeping at a gas station overnight. Of course, we had our furnace running to keep us warm, our generator, and our lead-acid batteries. We shut off our generator when it was time to go to bed, thinking the batteries would surely be fine overnight with only the furnace fan occasionally running to keep us warm. Well, we woke up at 4 am freezing because our lead-acid batteries only made it about 6 hrs into the night before dying and shutting all our power down. Luckily, I started our motorhome and got enough juice to start our generator and get the heat back on before any damage was done due to freezing.
The upgrade from lead acid to lithium
Not only was this a big lesson learned for us, but it also solidified our decision that we needed to upgrade our 12-volt power system. Battle Born Batteries was a company that we watched and researched for a while. After talking with Battle Born Batteries, we decided to do what we considered a simple swap. Battle Born Batteries confirmed that the converter in our Winnebago Vista could charge their batteries, so we removed our two group 24 lead-acid batteries from under our stairwell and replaced them with two Battle Born Batteries. This simple upgrade took us from 75 usable amp-hours to 200 usable amp-hours using the same amount of space for the new batteries.
This upgrade alone in power would have been enough for us to switch, but the thing that attracted us just as much was Battle Born Batteries’ built-in battery management system (BMS for short). This BMS took care of the batteries in every way, which meant I could not damage the batteries by using them like I could our lead-acid batteries. When you have lead-acid batteries, you can only discharge them to a 50% state of charge. Any more than that and you will start to damage a lead-acid battery and begin to degrade its life span.
Using their Battle Born Batteries
After a couple of years, we have added to our Battle Born system. We still have our two Battle Born Batteries under the steps, but we have added a Victron battery monitor and two 160-watt solar panels on the roof. We planned to start boondocking/dry camping more often. We felt we would like to have solar to keep our Battle Born Batteries topped off. Before the solar, we could go three days without running the generator. A big difference from barely making it a single night with our lead-acid batteries. So we added the solar and have now done up to 12 days in the winter without our generator.
I want to point out that our RV is not very power-hungry. We have a propane fridge and only a 1,000-watt inverter which is now the bottleneck in our system. Sabrina and I have been talking about upgrading to an 1800-watt inverter to run our microwave. Currently, we use our propane stove or cooktop while unplugged. You may ask why not fire up the generator to run the microwave when needed. The reason for that is, our generator has had a problem for years. It cannot power our A/C or Microwave correctly. We have brought it to two different shops. Neither could find the problem leaving the solution to be to replace the entire unit, which we are not prepared to do. We barely use it, so it’s just not worth it to us. (Our generator problems could be a whole separate blog, lol.)
Using Battle Born Batteries as part-time RVers
Another way we use our system now that we are part-time RVers is at home. We have enough property space to store our RV in our driveway. Typically for storage, it is good to have your RV connected to a trickle charger to keep the batteries charged. We don’t have to do that because of our solar panels. Because of the large capacity of our Battle Born Batteries, if we had a month of clouds in the winter, our batteries would be fine. If you ever catch the live podcasts that Sean and I do, you will know that I often broadcast from my RV unplugged and use our Battle Born Batteries to power the podcast for those episodes.
Well, that is my Battle Born Battery story so far, and I wish you all safe travels. If you have any questions for us, please do not hesitate to reach out and ask!
To listen to our podcast with the CEO of Battle Born Batteries, click here.
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