Solar Power for Dummies

High voltage panels are becoming so common because of "grid tie" systems

Remember solar charges the batteries,
your lights inverter etc.. run from the batteries not the solar

The theoretical ideal solar install does two things
It will replace all the power used between dusk and dawn while also having enough extra power to supply daytime use, and never again run the generator except in bad weather

Very Few people can attain this
I have not

The more battery bank you have the better solar can work for you
Running the generator for breakfast and dinner (even lunch)
Will greatly help balance power use and solar charging
Batteries are at thru weakest in the morning and so is the solar charge rate, so using the genset not inverter to make coffee and breakfast, saves battery and charges at the same time

Do you camp for weekends, or for long periods
With the right amount of solar and batteries you can camp for the weekend , no genset use, come home , and be ready to go again next weekend with fully charged batteries
If you do extended camping you may not ever be generator free

We full-time, have 505 watts of solar 900+ amp hr battery bank, residential 120v fridge, tv and pc every night
And do use the generator at mealtime, and more depending on weather

Piano... has less solar, uses electric heating, and hardly ever uses his generator

One thing that hasn't been mentioned: Unless your controller has remote battery voltage sense, it is imperative that the controller be located as close to the battery terminals as possible, and I don't mean 15 or 20 feet. At 20 amps I have almost a full volt drop between the output of the controller and the batteries. This means that the controller starts to taper off the amps thinking the batteries are at 14.6V when they are in fact only 13.8V. If you don't know already (you will soon learn in your reading) batteries need to get up to 14.4 volts for a while to become fully charged. I unknowingly spent an entire season undercharging my batteries and couldn't figure out why. :S

Hi Mr Wizard,

I did heat electrically without shore power when I was not full time. Now that I am I can't do more than 2 nights--and in the extreme cold of -20 I can only do one. Shore power or generator would be a must do, but it is far cheaper to go to a campground--or at least to somewhere that I have twin 15 amp shore power outlets I can hook up to.

I can heat from the chassis when in motion by moving the air with fans.

MrWizard wrote:


And do use the generator at mealtime, and more depending on weather

Piano... has less solar, uses electric heating, and hardly ever uses his generator

Thanks to those who posted. Though it looks like I may have to rethink my plans to purchase a hard-copy of a solar power manual, after reading the posts here I feel a lot more comfortable with the technology. For sure I’ll cut and paste much of what’s been written here into a word document where I can study it and also fish out the many words and acronyms I don’t understand and build a definition list of my own.

Thanks again!

Steve