My Solar Controller says it charged, but..

[Steve079]

I have installed 2 6v batteries in series in our '17 Springdale 17ft er. I had them hooked to shore power. I unplugged it, a few days ago, turning on all the interior lights, bath fan and radio to run the batteries down a bit. Today, I hooked up my 100w Renology suitcase. The batteries were at 12.4.

Hooked up the panel, didn't have a manual, they have quit shipping them in order to be more ecologically conscious, lol. (Cheap), and the website they said to reference to GET a manual, was under construction, so, I used the Controllers manual, which gave me an idea of what I needed to do.

Controller said the battery was fully charged, after about 4 hours. I disconnected it from the panel, and checked the voltage. 12.78v.

So, a couple questions. Do I need to monitor the level of charge, and disconnect when the battery is fully charged? Can it be left connected. Is the voltage of 2, 6vs the same as 2 12v's, when fully charged?

I had all the interior lights, the radio, and the bath fan on, while the panel was hooked up. Anyway, so far I'm happy with it, but I know the area we're going to be camping in, may not be very sunny, so I'll have my generator for back up.

[shov]

If you have a solar charge controller installed and set up, leave it connected. 12.4 is a pretty low. Let the solar panels and charge controller do their job and you won't have to worry about it. The will flood the batteries then level off and float kind of a trickle to pack the batteries. Depending on the battery each manufacturer has different specifications.


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[chuckster57]

SOC (state of charge) should be measured with the batteries disconnected from any load or charging source and left "idle" for about 2 hours for most accurate reading. 12.7V is considered fully charged by most.

[Steve079]

So, Friday night after I got thru playing with the solar panel, I left a couple lights on all night, and through the day while I went fishing. Late Saturday, I reconnected the "solar suitcase", and took note of the initial readings. My check of the batteries before I hooked up, showed 12.7v.
The controller showed my batteries at 77% charged, 14v, and 5.9 amps. As the sun set, the charging amps dropped, but it also showed the batteries percentage of charge was also dropping, from 77, to 63, to 55 percent. That didn't make sense to me. Friday night, it was near 100%, 97% I think it was.
I checked the batteries after I disconnected, the reading was 13.1 I just checked them again this morning, and they sat right at 12.7.
I think I need to do some reading about the controller, so I have a better grasp of what all those different readings mean. I was thinking the controller was acting up, but maybe I'm just not understanding what its telling me.