Catastrophic failure of our batteries! No power in 90-degree heat
We took all the necessary steps to ready our RV for a life of freedom: We installed a hefty solar system and still had our generator backup. We even upgraded our toilet, complete with a handheld bidet for more water efficiency. We were ready to boondock our way through the summer season, staying at no-hookup campsites and dispersed camping areas.
What we didn't take into consideration was just how easily equipment can malfunction when the temperatures are desert-sun-hot out. We made it through Wyoming by the skin of our teeth, with only two full-hookup reprieves. We battled temporary equipment failures, a decrease in solar efficiency, and even some heat-related illness. It was not the summer we had looked forward to.
Then, by the time we reached the end of our west-to-east trek across the state, we had a couple of equipment failures that told us once and for all, "For Pete's sake, get yourself some hookups and start enjoying camping again!" Our generator began releasing horrid gaseous fumes and then eventually stopped turning on unless we aired out the entire access panel. The very next day, our water pump died. We had already booked a site at the KOA in Devils Tower, and so we happily went. After that, we ventured into South Dakota, where we booked a site at the Rapid City KOA. Did we mention that we love ourselves a KOA when we're in desperate need of a regroup? Finally back in civilization, we were ready to tackle our repairs. We had made an appointment at Dakota RV in Rapid City to get our generator fixed and our water pump replaced. In the midst of some incredible adventures in and around the Black Hills, we squeezed in a day of displacement, dropping the rig off to be serviced and cooling our heels in the truck for a few hours. With a dog and a cat, there are limits on what we can do when we're out of the rig, but we made it work with a pet-friendly shopping spree.
We planned our service appointment during a travel day, so we could leave our KOA, get the repairs, and then head to our next campground. We might be our own worst enemy, because we chose no hookups again! And trust us when we say, we were not out of the summer heat yet.
But we couldn't help ourselves. The Black Hills were fast becoming one of our favorite regions we've visited in our travels, and we wanted to stay at a national forest campground. We booked a beautiful wooded site at Sheridan Lake that, if our equipment held out, would be our home through Labor Day Weekend.
We have only positive things to say about Dakota RV. They were efficient, responsive, and got the jobs done. Our new water pump was working great and was much quieter than our previous one. Our generator was no longer triggering our carbon monoxide detector. And on the hot days, we had some shade from the ponderosas to help keep temperatures tolerable. We really thought we were going to make it through this time!
And yes, we did indeed make it through...sort of. We did technically stay at Sheridan Lake for the entire duration of our reservation, but we're sorry to say that our very last night was the type of night we wouldn't wish on anybody.
It was Sunday of Labor Day Weekend, and the temperatures got up to around 90 degrees. Certainly not even close to the worst heat we had, but in the afternoon we did run the generator so we could use both ACs and recharge our batteries. After a few hours, we hit 100% state of charge...and then, just a few minutes later, we lost power. With the batteries fully charged and the generator running.
Strangely, it was our 12V (battery) power we lost, and only for a split second. Then, it happened again a few minutes later. And again. We scratched our heads as to what the issue could be. Of course our immediate thoughts went back to the generator. Was it not actually fixed? Was it causing something to surge or trip? The power went out whenever we turned both ACs on, and even though the generator never stopped providing power, and the batteries still read their normal charge, voltage, and temperature. So we tried turning the generator off and only running one AC, because we're able to run one at a time off our solar. Only, right after we turned that AC on, we lost power again. And again. And again. So it wasn't the generator, and we didn't know what it was, except that it was a humdinger.
We noticed at that point that the battery voltage was no longer reading charged. It had dropped as low as it usually gets when we're at less than 40%. We tried running several different appliances, and by this point, we lost power testing anything that drew more than a few hundred watts from the batteries.
No problem, we thought. Clearly something was wrong and needed to be addressed, but for now we'd just run the generator until the weather cooled off and try to limit our power overnight. Easy peasy!
Except not so much. The generator uses the RV batteries to start itself. For those first few seconds, it has to draw about a thousand watts. We tried to start it anyway, but everything blacked out. We weren't able to use our generator, and our batteries were depleting their power far faster than normal. We were sitting ducks.
If it's not 100% clear by this point, the Universe does NOT want us to boondock! But, the Universe also plays very nicely when we cooperate and book full hookups. We did the literal same thing that we had done before Devils Tower. We booked a full hookup site for our next stop, and right afterwards, we started having equipment failures that would have made it impossible to boondock anyways.
This time, just a few hours before the power outages, Nicole was looking at the weather forecast for the next week. We had plans to drive east towards Wall, SD and the Badlands, and we wanted to dispersed camp at the Buffalo Gap National Grassland - basically one of the best, if not the best place for dispersed camping in the entire country. We hadn't dispersed camped since our Grand Teton site that we fled, but if there was ever a place to try again, Buffalo Gap was it. Only, the weather was predicting a gnarly storm coming in that Tuesday, and when high winds and rains are predicted, Buffalo Gap is not a place we wanna be. So Nicole erred on the side of caution and booked a site at Sleepy Hollow RV Park in Wall, SD for a couple days. We figured we'd wait out the storm there, see how the weather was looking, and then head to Buffalo Gap.
But then there we were, sitting in our sinking ship. At this point, we were fairly sure that the batteries were the culprit, but that was very surprising because they were only 6 months old and state-of-the-art lithium ion. We also didn't want to believe that it was the batteries, because without the batteries, there was very little chance of being able to stay in our RV. But we had to face the facts. We might no longer have functioning batteries, and either way, we'd be losing all power by morning, even if we conserved as much as possible. As we patiently waited for the sun to set and the heat to subside, we watched our voltage. It became apparent that those batteries were depleting fast. We weren't going to be even close to making it until morning. We'd be out of power by midnight.
We had no choice but to throw up a few Hail Marys and troubleshoot. We needed to officially narrow down that the batteries were our weak link by checking their behavior while we isolated various parts of our system.
We have a bank of four 200Ah lithium ion batteries. A full charge is 14.5V, and they're considered dead at 12V. We thought surely not all could fail at once, and that maybe one or two were faulty and affecting the others. So Anthony completely disconnected the power, disconnected the batteries from each other, and measured
the voltage of each. One of them read 12.8V, and the others were all under 2V.
Something had depleted them much more than they should ever get. The best we got was our only holdout, the one reading 12.8V. More in a comatose state than totally dead. So Anthony tried to connect just that one, but it didn't work, and then that battery too dropped below 1V. Cue the flatline.
Now we had no power at all, no Starlink, and we were in a dead zone for cell service. Our fridge would slowly lose its cool and we'd likely have to throw out a bunch of our food. Worst of all, we had no idea if our batteries suffered irreparable damage, and if they did, how long it would take before getting new ones. And, without knowing the cause of this whole problem, we couldn't be assured that it wouldn't happen again.
Without batteries, we didn't even know if we'd be able to get power from a pedestal at our full hookup site the next day. Before we lost all communication with the outside world, we tried researching this. Half the sources online say you can get shore power to your rig without batteries. Half the sources say you can't. We called a mobile tech and he said he'd give it about even odds. We wouldn't know anything until we could find a place to plug in the next morning.
Our campground in Wall was about 90 minutes away, and the last thing we wanted to do was tow all the way there not knowing if we'd be able to get electricity. So we made a plan to ask the camphosts first thing in the morning if there was anywhere to plug in. There were no electric sites in the entire campground except for the host sites themselves. Thankfully, one of the hosts was tent camping and not using her pedestal, and she let us plug in on our way out of the campground.
First, we tried plugging in with the batteries disconnected. No power was let through except for the microwave clock (???)...we still don't really understand what happened there. From what we gathered from our research, whether or not an RV accepts shore power without batteries is dependent on how the 12V system is set up. We weren't surprised that we needed batteries in order to get any power, given how our converter is set up. But, the real question at that point was, would our batteries give us enough juice to even show the converter that they're there in the first place?
Anthony reconnected all four batteries, and we kept our fingers crossed that they'd give us some signs of life.
It worked!
Our power kicked on, and we breathed a huge sigh of relief that we'd be able to continue our travels and stay in our trailer. Granted, the panel said our batteries were fully charged when they clearly weren't, but we hoped this would recalibrate after we hooked up to a pedestal longer.
It was time to thank our camphosts and head to Wall! We even filled out the campground comment card - something to remember us by.
Once we got to Sleepy Hollow, we asked to extend our stay through the week. We were bummed that we wouldn't be able to dispersed camp in the coveted Buffalo Gap, but we needed to just count our blessings that we were able to camp at all. And so we settled in and monitored our batteries as they recharged from the shore power.
After that, the batteries began holding charge just fine. Well, except for one SNAFU when we needed to switch sites at the campground (because our first site was already booked when we tried to extend, and so we needed to move 20ft for the remainder of the week). Just moving one row over, we went back inside to no power. We started freaking out, but Nicole tried the masterful first step in any technological troubleshooting process: Turn it off and on again. With a flip of the 12V switch, everything came back on and we were back in business. Since then, our batteries have been working normally, though at the time of writing this post, we haven't tried camping without shore power or recharging the batteries with the generator. But, the voltage readings have been consistent and expected, and on travel days when we stop for breaks, we've been able to run our typical appliances off our batteries.
So what actually happened to cause this temporary catastrophic failure of not 1, not 2, not 3, but 4 high-end lithium ion batteries? We put our heads together with our solar installer, Boondoctor John, and came up with a theory. When the generator had almost fully charged the batteries, they shot way up in temperature. We had been checking their temperature regularly, given that it was 90 degrees that day, but every time we checked, they seemed fine. It's possible they were at uneven temperatures because our panel only gives us one reading, or it's possible that the temperature was also affecting a sensor and gave us the wrong reading. We're still not sure and might never know, but we already had plans to better temperature control and ventilate our storage bay where our batteries and inverter are located. This debacle just reiterated our desperate need to do so. The good news was though, that after a whole day on shore power, the batteries slowly recharged themselves, and from what we can tell, no permanent damage was done.
We knew that RVing in hot weather in an aluminum tin can would cause us problems, and so maybe this summer was a lesson learned that if temps are going to be in the 90s or above, it's time to go somewhere else, ideally with hookups. No more challenging ourselves to put both our trailer and our bodies through the ringer. RVs are supposed to be fun!
Another lesson learned: John informed us that we could have jump started our generator with jumper cables. Huh. Just a tidbit of advice that we'll keep tucked in our hats for next time...but there better not be a next time!
