General RV Solar Questions?
I'm planning to add a couple of new high end Kyocera 140 panels and build up a new system out of them. Currenly I have what my old 95' Squire 400 came with which is a substandard and smaller panel wi...
Forum Discussion
JiminDenver wrote:
I ran a test with a 250ah 8-D discharged to 12.1v resting and a 220w system. After 5 hours in brilliant sunshine and subfreezing temperatures I think it made the battery giggle. The battery needed 125 ah replaced and the system could do a tenth of that, it would take days. Even tracking the sun for long hours in the summer, it would take a few days to get a really good charge and that's without you using it.
Simply put, big loads take big battery banks, big banks need a lot of panel.
I agree with the last sentence in that larger banks need proportionally more panel assuming proportionally greater usage. But I don't quite understand your example. If you got only five hours at full power, that's still 65 to 80 Ah and should bring the bank back to about 80%. If you add in the shoulder hours I would venture to say the total harvest should be closer to 100Ah and would bring the bank close to 90%. It might take longer than one day to get back to 100% but you would get there on the second day.
Three days ago with 370 watts of panels, panels tilted but not optimally pointed south, intermittent clouds I harvested 160 Ah. Proportional to a 220 watt panel that would be 95 Ah.
