full time solar, maybe?
i have been thinking to go solar with my 29' Cougar 5th wheel. ok, maybe day dreaming would be a better term. i figure that i if i can make things run on a 2900W generator, why can't it work on a 29...
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I run 8 group 24 wet batteries on the tow vehicle, and two more on the fifth wheel. Thats roughly 400 lbs on the truck, which by themselves will run a 1500 watt block heater for about 4.5 hours. After that the batteries still have power for smaller loads, just not the heater. We have 640 watts of solar and run a couple of small room ac units in the fifth, and could probably run one for about 14 hours @ 500 watts just off the batteries. For sustained real life situations, I think I would need to double the solar and batteries to run one set while charging the other and be able to run two ac units. When I last looked, @ 97 outside temp, inside was 78-80 depending on where, with bath and bed closed off, two small ac's and two smaller fans running to circulate the air, using 1060 watts. In an ideal lossless world, I have 9000 watt hrs available with all ten batts. A lot less in real life. But it is all fun stuff.
