The biggest lesson I learned over the past year with one 400W system was to move away from using lead acid deep cycle batteries for this application.
I had 2 - 90 Ah 12v lead acids in parallel and my charge controller has great metering. I found, after drawing the first 20 Ah, was the batteries were dipping well below 12 volts during 10A transmit.
When I pushed it further, the HF rig would reset due to low voltage.? Without a load, those batteries would float back up a half volt or more.
The Lithium Iron phosphate chemistry cells have a much lower internal resistance and much higher energy density, yet are much safer than Lithium ion.
They can be shipped and the quoted price is to your door.
With a single 100 Ah LiFePO4 - even drawing 25A while transmitting 100W - the voltage only drops to 13 volts. The radio is much happier.
The only downside I have encountered happened when I had adjusted my charge controller to charge to 14.6 volts.? The Lithium's protection circuitry opened the battery connection and the radios were floating momentarily at panel level - almost 20 volts!? My own fault.? A Internet "experts" advice that was years old. Controller default is 14.2 volts.?
73
Mike N0QBH
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N0QBH Mike Berg