Battery/Inverter issue

[tomtom]

I have a 2021 Thor Compass TW. I installed a 1200 watt Aims sine wave inverter. It worked great. I wanted to upgrade the not so good original equipment battery so I purchased a 150 amp hour AGM valve regulated battery. It was the largest battery that would fit in the battery compartment. When I installed it. The inverter started to click and the coach voltage indicator started to bounce around. Is there a problem with installing this type of battery? Is the battery defective? I removed the new battery and installed the original back in. Everything is fine with the original battery. Please advise.

[EA37TS]

When I was looking at something over the weekend I saw an article where the author mentioned that although AGM is a good battery for RVs there is a certain type of AGM battery that cannot/should not be used. Since my rigs came stock with 6 AGM batteries (2 chassis and 4 coach) I didn't dig into the topic too deeply and went about my research on the topic of the time.

You might do a little research into types of AGM batteries.

[DavidEM]

I don't understand why the battery type makes any difference. But FWIW a VRLA battery is a pure starting battery and shouldn't be used in deep cycle service, not because it won't work but because it won't last long.

David

[taylorbob1]

Originally Posted by tomtom

I have a 2021 Thor Compass TW. I installed a 1200 watt Aims sine wave inverter. It worked great. I wanted to upgrade the not so good original equipment battery so I purchased a 150 amp hour AGM valve regulated battery. It was the largest battery that would fit in the battery compartment. When I installed it. The inverter started to click and the coach voltage indicator started to bounce around. Is there a problem with installing this type of battery? Is the battery defective? I removed the new battery and installed the original back in. Everything is fine with the original battery. Please advise.

What brand, what model battery?

Are you sure that all your connections were on-point? Sounds to me like your connections failed

[16ACE27]

Originally Posted by DavidEM

I don't understand why the battery type makes any difference. But FWIW a VRLA battery is a pure starting battery and shouldn't be used in deep cycle service, not because it won't work but because it won't last long.

David

Really? I'm thinking VRLA batteries are "standby" batteries, used mostly in UPS applications. They're basically SLA batteries with a safety valve.

Originally Posted by Storage Battery Systems LLC

Styles of sealed VRLA batteries include front-access telecom cells as well as high-rate UPS replacement batteries for Liebert, MGE and Powerware among others. General purpose SLAs are also produced for emergency lighting and other applications.

[tomtom]

The battery connections were definitely correct. Black to negative red to positive. I followed the black leads to ground. The make of the battery was NPP and was sold on Amazon for $299.00. When it arrived I noticed some minor leakage that occurred during shipping. I know these type of batteries are sealed and should not leak. When I notified the seller he agreed and gave be a full refund. I reinstalled the original battery and hooked it up the same way and works great. No problems except it’s not a good battery. I do have room for 2 batteries but I thought 1 large one made more sense. Am I wrong? Any suggestions?

[taylorbob1]

Originally Posted by tomtom

The battery connections were definitely correct. Black to negative red to positive. I followed the black leads to ground. The make of the battery was NPP and was sold on Amazon for $299.00. When it arrived I noticed some minor leakage that occurred during shipping. I know these type of batteries are sealed and should not leak. When I notified the seller he agreed and gave be a full refund. I reinstalled the original battery and hooked it up the same way and works great. No problems except it’s not a good battery. I do have room for 2 batteries but I thought 1 large one made more sense. Am I wrong? Any suggestions?

Sounds like you got a bad battery.

If you have room for two batteries, my opinion is that you install two new deep cycle, both at the same time.
FLA is cheapest & what I use with my 300 watt solar set-up & AIMs inverter.
But many believe in AGM.

As discussed many times on this Forum...if you decide to upgrade to Lithium, you’ll probably need to change-out your WFCO Converter/Charger.

PS-By the way, that NPP is a monster. Weighs 100#

[Beau388]

VRVA battery is a construction of batteries and not a use designation. Valve Regulated Lead Acid (VRLA) batteries use the metal calcium to stiffen the grids in the batteries rather than antimony used in the older watered batteries. Watered batteries often called flooded batteries contain sulfuric acid in liquid form and when the lead is alloyed with antimony do require watering as the charging reaction will cause some water to be vaporized along with hydrogen gas (often called boiling off). When the battery's lead is alloyed with calcium, there is little loss of water during the charging cycle if the battery is charged slowly; thus, the battery shell can be sealed. The VRLA battery can be flooded, gel or AGM in construction. Further designations can be starting, deep cycle and marine. Because of the charging and discharging requirements (ions move much slower in the gel than in a liquid), gel batteries are only built for deep cycle applications.