I would be more worried about the limitations of your alternator.
Figure out your maximum load and see how close it comes to the alternator
output.
If you plan on more load than you generate, an extra battery is not going to
help for long.
-----Original Message-----
From: Sterling Jacobson
Sent: Tuesday, July 11, 2017 6:14 PM
To: '[email protected]'
Subject: [AFMUG] OT: Road Trip Battery
I've got a cross country family trip from Utah to New York coming up and I
want to wire up a secondary battery to my Toyota Minivan.
I know, maybe I'm crazy, but I want to be able to run all our electronics on
the trip, including maybe a computer for serving up video (another topic).
I want it on a secondary system so I get more power and don't kill the main
car battery.
From what I gather I would need a sealed battery to avoid fumes (mostly).
I would need a some sort of control system so the battery can charge from
the alternator, but not drain the main battery.
I need high gage wire between the batteries/alternater along with fuse, and
also between secondary battery and large inverter for AC power.
Probably not possible to shove another battery under the hood of the
mini-van, but I haven't checked.
Is this a silly idea?
