Empty Nest, Soon wrote:
OP here. Wow, this had gotten complicated beyond what I had expected.
When I/we camped in the mountains in the TT, I probably had to replace 30 amp-hours a day, depending on how much we ran the furnace. We never had a TV in the TT, we never once used the microwave except as a breadbox, and we used the A/C only with hookups.
Now that we will be camping in the motorhome, I expect we will use only a little more battery power. I don’t expect to use much 120 VAC from the inverter while boondocking. It would be great if the solar will replace most of what we use, and I figure the portable charger will pick up most of the difference. If warranted, I can run the Onan occasionally. It just doesn’t make sense to me to run that big boy just to charge batteries when I have a good little genset which should do the same job more cheaply and quietly, but slower.
When we’re traveling, rather than camping, I hope to have 50 amp shore power except on rare occasions.
Wayne
In that case, you might want to consider splitting your bank in two. The result will be 2X the charging rate (40a on 200Ah bank vs. 40a on 400Ah bank (so 1/2 the time) and lower dod's which will accommodate even faster charging. (50-80% is much faster than 80-100%, as I pointed out previously). Just make sure you do the batts up to FULL quite regularly. This requires top charging and the occasional equalizing.
Plus, those 100 watts of solar will have a much better chance of keeping up.
