What did you do to your Patrol today!

[MudRunnerTD]

My expectation of the solar matches yours MR, I only mentioned it as a 'clunky alternative to re-charging a 400Ah battery bank if it had been severely depleted by winching use, if the 300A alternator were not used. It could be a 3 day job. I can't see what connecting the 400Ah batteries in series would achieve - it would not increase the stored capacity, only the voltage (although this would allow for smaller connecting cables). The need for current regulation of a 300Amp alternator feeding into the 400AH battery ban would remain surely. The reason I suggested the possible need to have the 300A alternator only switched through to the 400Ah battery bank was in the absence of any means of regulating the output in normal circumstances when winch9ng was not occurring. I didn't suggest (I dont think) that it should be connected to a single battery, (Ie the crank battery) as this would have pretty much the same issue. What I did suggest was a two alternator setup, with the 300A one restricted to winch use only, unless there were some means of regulating it's current output.

I don't understand your comment about a shared load - shared with what?

It is all conjecture on my part. If you have a 300A alternator, or know of others who do, charging lead based battery banks of less than say 1200Ah how is yours (or theirs) set up? Maybe I am imagining a problem which doesn't exist?

To be honest the more I think about it the more I think a change of battery type to LiFePo4 is probably the best, albeit rather expensive, solution.

Hi mate, I am.on the phone so can't be shagged scrubbing out all the text but my comment regarding shared load and running the batteries in series was applying the logic (which is all I have) that if there is 400amps of battery storage available then allow theb300amp to be delivered to all of it at once rather than one at a time until each fills.

1 x 400lt tank will fill evenly rather than 4 x 100lt tanks 1 at a time. This may be truly floored but makes sense in my head. I am way way out of my comfort zone. Phil is all over it and clearly knows his stuff. I have learnt plenty here. I am.juat trying to apply some "First Principles" as this is how I function when developing Engineering strategies for work. You guys are covering plenty of detail on the fine points though.