How to measure how much solar we need?
(hope this is right section) Brought home TT last month and now have basics taken care of and RV is road ready. Now starting to think about bigger long term projects. One project is, we would like...
Forum Discussion
Just keep in mind that a typical 120WATT SOLAR PANEL will only produce around 5 AMPs DC current when in the high sun.
You will need alot of panels to just run yout system off the solar panels to run many things in your trailer.
What you want to do is install enough batteries to run all of the 120VAC items you want to run from a INVERTER running off the batteries and 12VDC items direct connected to the battery bank.
Then you want to use enough solar panels to re-charge these battery banks back up to their 90% charge state in the time period the solar panels are in high sun.
Just be aware to re-charge a 12VDC deep cycle battery from its 50% charge state to its 90% charge state in a three hour smart mode run time will take 14.4VDC with the capacity of 17-20AMPs DC Current. You will have to get a very large solar panel system to produce this amount of power during the high sun time frame.
Then you have to worry about what happens if it is cloudy or raining. You will not get enough sun then to charge your batteries. Now you have to have a generator set to do the charging.
It takes planning and knowing how it all works...
For our life style of camping off the power grid I am looking into installing two 120WATT panels on the front of my POPUP trailer roof and a larger 200 watt or bigger solar panel on the rear of my popup trailer roof. This will only give me around 20AMPS of DC current so I may have to run my generator for the first hour of re-charging to get my battery charge draw below the initial high current charge requirement and then allow the solar panels to finish off my battery charge for the rest of the high sun day. The 20AMPS total Solar output would only re-charge one of my four batteries in a three hour run. These are the type of things I will have to plan for...
All of this depends on what you want to do with your trailer when camping off the power grid.
food for thought here
Roy Ken
You will need alot of panels to just run yout system off the solar panels to run many things in your trailer.
What you want to do is install enough batteries to run all of the 120VAC items you want to run from a INVERTER running off the batteries and 12VDC items direct connected to the battery bank.
Then you want to use enough solar panels to re-charge these battery banks back up to their 90% charge state in the time period the solar panels are in high sun.
Just be aware to re-charge a 12VDC deep cycle battery from its 50% charge state to its 90% charge state in a three hour smart mode run time will take 14.4VDC with the capacity of 17-20AMPs DC Current. You will have to get a very large solar panel system to produce this amount of power during the high sun time frame.
Then you have to worry about what happens if it is cloudy or raining. You will not get enough sun then to charge your batteries. Now you have to have a generator set to do the charging.
It takes planning and knowing how it all works...
For our life style of camping off the power grid I am looking into installing two 120WATT panels on the front of my POPUP trailer roof and a larger 200 watt or bigger solar panel on the rear of my popup trailer roof. This will only give me around 20AMPS of DC current so I may have to run my generator for the first hour of re-charging to get my battery charge draw below the initial high current charge requirement and then allow the solar panels to finish off my battery charge for the rest of the high sun day. The 20AMPS total Solar output would only re-charge one of my four batteries in a three hour run. These are the type of things I will have to plan for...
All of this depends on what you want to do with your trailer when camping off the power grid.
food for thought here
Roy Ken
