We just bought a fifth wheel! Several questions ...

jornvango wrote:
Thanks!

We won't have access to shore power. The house will be off grid and run on solar.

I'm thinking one or two batteries in the RV to charge with Renogy. I can monitor and add panels if needed.

We are thinking about getting a Jackery with solar panel separately to place in the living area to charge our phones and laptop.

Heating will be catalytic so no RV battery needed. Or perhaps a diesel heater once I can get around to taking on that project.

What kind of electrical appliances are you thinking of running? coffee pot, toaster, microwave? That is really what you need to know to size your battery bank and the type of batteries. how cold does it get.

for example, in my 5th wheel I have four 6V batteries and 480watts of solar. that will let me run the microwave and if I limit that to 10 min a day and only run the Keurig in the morning and once after supper, keep tv down to a reasonable amount and it is sunny I don't have to worry about not having power, that's even with running the propane furnace, but 2 6V will not let you draw as deep on the inverter before you get low power alarms due to the initial draw down of the battery. Four allows you to go a bit deeper while adding capacity at the same time. going to a different type of battery say LiFePO4 gives you a large capacity still and less of an effect on voltage drop but if the battery is going to get below 0C or 32F you must take that into consideration. price wise for the same usable capacity LiFePO4 is cheaper if you compare it to quality lead acid batteries, for example I just replaced my four 6V batteries in my rv with cheap batteries (220cdn each and that's cheap for decent batteries up here and that even includes the discount from where I work) good batteries say something like rolls Surrett are almost 500 each after tax but you won't find a higher quality 6V battery.

Going back to my cheap ones which was the point after tax, it was about 1000cdn to put 4 in and that gives me 220 usable AH. To compare that to the price I think I can get two 100AH LifePo4 batteries for 337.00 each. Yes, they are eco worthy and cheap, but cheap LFP is still better than cheap lead acid. so, I could get 3 for the same price giving me 300 usable AH and 4 times the life, so when that cycle life is factored in, they become less than 1/4 the price of the lead acid.

The other thing that will let you do more is your solar. solar panels are ridiculously cheap if you source them yourself. What I try to do is size my system to replace all the power I used in the evening and overnight by noon the next day and then run everything I use during the day maintaining my batteries at 100% until the solar charging drops off. so, on my 5th wheel I have 480 watts and it works for me as we are pretty careful about when we use the inverter and when we don't, but I can't say leave the bar fridge in the outdoor kitchen plugged in, so I am looking at doubling my solar and converting the batteries to LifePO4 with a much larger capacity to be able to do this.

If you can put in the house solar system and depending how you're setting up the battery storage if you can set that up and the inverter, you can just plug into that system.