Solar pay off?

For most of my road trips, if I wanted to save money, I would be better off driving my Honda Fit and staying in a motel or tent camping rather than driving my motorhome. If I really wanted to save money, it often would be even cheaper to fly or take Amtrak or a bus. RVing is rarely a truly economical way to travel, and solar power for an RV is usually not so much about just dollars and cents as it is about the capability to operate somewhere without services more effectively and conveniently. Naturally, there are many different ways people use RVs and these generalizations are not true in every case, but I think it's valid for the majority.

I've thought about solar power, but for the kinds of trips I've taken it would not be particularly helpful; I tend to travel relatively frequently and not stay put too long, and my motorhome charges the house batteries pretty effectively from the engine when I am on the road for a day. I also rather prefer to camp in a wooded area vs. a wide open space, and trees don't generally help the effectiveness of solar panels.

I guess you could technically say we boondock every day on our way to our destination. We usually pull into a rest stop or truck stop around 6pm, make dinner take a shower and hit the hay early. So the only real time we are hooked up is when we stay at the final destination if it has hook ups. The only thing i run the onboard genny for is our keurig in the morning, and to recharge things , laotops, etc.. But even then we do have one outlet dedicated to a 400 watt inverter from the factory. If we need the microwave then its the genny for as long as that's needed, and if we go someplace where A/C is necessary... Its a RV park for us.

For us it's not about recouping. It's more about noise and fuel. Running a generator is about as expensive as you can do it but that doesn't mean it's bad for you.

It depends on how much power you need. It's like money, it's often easier to conserve than to get more. So if you don't need a lot of amp hours returned then the generator is fine. I have a 1000 watts and often use more than it can produce. I'd be running a generator all day so the solar does provide a cost savings for me but I don't know the numbers.

I want to be just as comfortable in our RV as our house so it takes a lot of power. If I didn't have solar I'd probably sit in a park and only boondock very little.

My plan was to break even in three years but I think we did it in two years. We boondock about 120 days a year.

For me, the primary advantage of solar is not having to run the genny. If you already own the genny, you'll probably never recoup the cost of solar. If you find the value of quiet battery charging to be priceless, you'll recoup the cost of solar on the first day.