Electrical system out? Could be a power struggle

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It seemed like a good idea to plug the van into my home so that I could turn on the air conditioner and cool it off before we hit the road after Albuquerque had heated up to almost 90 degrees.

The plan was to cool off the van for an hour, unhook the shore power and then crank up the van motor and have its alternator supply power in order to keep the rear air on while driving the already cooled vehicle.

It’s worth noting, our Sportsmobile campervan has an AC like many RVs that optimally should only be run on shore power and with a soft startup device that prevents a full draw on the cooler startup.

We have almost never used the AC on our many trips. The rare situation we did was at a campground with full electrical plug-ins, when it was more than 100 degrees after we went to a Texas wedding. That time, we overnighted at the convenient Wichita Falls city campground, right off of U.S. 287.

Unfortunately, on a recent trip, after switching from shore power at home to driving, the draw of the AC on the electrical system was too great, and the lithium batteries went into protect mode.

Everything was off that was connected to the house battery: that meant no rear AC, no lights inside for the evening, and most importantly, the refrigerator was powerless and was getting warm just minutes from home. The battery system controller error codes flashed red, and I realized the mistake of my ways. The driver turned the van around and hit every red light on the way back to the house.

Being a known killer of four AGM (absorbent glass mat, not lithium) batteries in about six years, I feared the worst.

Luckily, the Battle Born battery support website reminded me of how to reset. The amazing, Nevada-staffed Battle Born tech team had told me this, years before, in a call.

“It may seem like the battery is malfunctioning or damaged, but actually, the battery has gone into low voltage disconnect,” according to the Battle Born support website. “In this mode, the internal battery management system (BMS) is protecting the battery from falling below 10V and won’t allow a charge to be drawn from the battery.”

As soon as I again plugged the shore power cable to a normal socket at the house via extension cord and converter, the system came to life.

We left the shore power plugged in for a minute, reset the inverter and the electrical kill switch, and all seemed well. Weeks later, I learned, I should have precisely followed the instructions.

The trip resumed flawlessly after another lesson in battery management.

The following week, the battery faced an error code again and the power system went out overnight, leaving some food spoiled in the refrigerator.

Here’s the last step I skipped to keep my lithium batteries in top-notch condition: “To get a battery out of low voltage disconnect mode, simply take the battery out of the system, connect it to another 12V source for about 5 to 10 minutes.” Battle Born says. “This process is similar to jumping a dead car battery and will ‘awaken’ the battery.”

Note the 5 to 10 minutes. Once awakened this time, I charged much longer than just a couple of minutes.

Let there be lights.