Harvesting Solar
Please see signature for list of equipment installed and in use. We are currently sitting for 2 weeks in a RV Park in Goodyear, AZ with included electric. I was curious about just how much solar p...
Forum Discussion
Cptnvideo wrote:
StirCrazy, our fridge is a 20cf residential and total hourly battery usage runs between 16 and 20 ah. So for 24 hours, draw on the battery bank is between 384 and 480 ah. We have and can run A/C as well.
Our intent was to boondock about 75% of the time but it has turned out to be more like 50%. Like 2oldman said, we wanted comfort and convenience. And like Vintage 465, our boondock limitation is water - we need water every 9 or 10 days. With a reasonable amount of sunshine we can boondock indefinitely without a generator (although we do have one). That does exclude December when the sun angle is too low and not enough hours of sunshine.
ya I guess comfort and conveniance is different for everyone, I was just surprised at the draw total.. it is incomprehensible for some one who lives up north and boon docks. the only people I know that put residential fridges in are snowbirds that go to Arazona for the winter ;) like my mom and dad haha..
for myself I have 480 watts of solar and four 6V GC batteries in a 40 foot 5th, we use 110 in the morning to make coffee and toast, then in the evening for the kids to watch a movie, maybe the microwave to warm up leftovers for supper, make popcorn, or if the youngest grandsone is with us to warm up baby food/bottles. and of course to run the keuig to make coffee. other than that I have a insiir panel so I only turn on my inverter when we are going to use it, the water heater, fridge and BBQ run off my propane, I take my GMG smoker but it only draws 40 watts of 12v for 2 min then goes down to 10watts for the rest of the cook. by myself with a full take of water I could probably go 2 to 3 weeks, with the wife up to 2 weeks, if we got the kids we are down to a week watching the water.. and my batteries are back up to 100% every day.
I did try run the electric bar fridge in the outdoor kitchen but its draw is just to much to keep up with so my next project will be to increase the solar enough to cover that also and switch the 5th to LiFePO4 like I did the camper. I don't need the bar fridge but I like that I can pack it plum full with pop and beer and not worry about having it in the indoor fridge. I guess you could put an adsorbition fridge in there... thats something to look at but I think it would be cheeper money wise to upgrade my solar and batteries.
