I love the idea of being self sufficient or living "off the grid".  Of course there's really no way to live off the grid all of the time in an RV since gasoline is needed regularly.  But by upgrading our battery bank, we can can go off-grid for short periods.  My desire for upgrading my battery bank spawned when my family and I were at a state park and we lost power for six hours because of a passing thunderstorm.  Our fully charged battery lasted only 4 short hours.  At the time we were consuming more power than necessary, but it still would have been nice to go double that.

I started researching in my spare time and found that most experienced people preferred to use two golf cart batteries (6 volts each) connected in series.  This configuration allowed for higher energy storage capacity (my two combined supply 215 AH). This capacity is much better than the group 24 marine battery.  The only downside to adding more batteries is their additional weight.

The batteries do not come with any kind of carrying handle, but do have places molded into the casing that allows the shown strap to hook to the battery.  Unfortunately the batteries I purchased normally do not come with the straps.  Only one strap is shipped to the distributor per pallet, but I got one since I bought the last two.

I had trouble finding a battery box that would house the two batteries.  These batteries are slightly taller that a group 24 battery.  I found the box shown @ http://www.alliedbattery.com for $70 + $15.00 s&h. I got lucky though and purchased mine used for $30 from someone online who no longer needed it. It's well-constructed.