Forum Discussion
JiminDenver
Oct 06, 2015Explorer II
The ones I make the panels weigh 40-50 pounds. That wont matter if you mount it. All in all somewhere between 4-500 range the way I do it but there are options.
You are right, the sun doesn't always shine, in fact here it only seems to shine until mid day. That said I haven't used a generator since I set out my first 230w set up three seasons ago. We had all of the power we could use for running the furnace, fans, TV, DVD, LED lights and it didn't even keep the battery from going into float by 9 am. The rest of the day the solar runs the trailer by it self and could have easily supported limited use of a larger inverter.
So if you use say 50 amp hours a day, you need to have 150 amp hours of usable battery to go for three days without charging. The solar will produce a minimal amount to stretch your battery but eventually you will need a alternate means of charging. without a generator with us, our alternate is a pair of jumper cables and the truck but we only go for a week or two at a time right now. I don't worry because with our solar and bank a week in overcast weather is no sweat as long as we don't run the air conditioner.
You are right, the sun doesn't always shine, in fact here it only seems to shine until mid day. That said I haven't used a generator since I set out my first 230w set up three seasons ago. We had all of the power we could use for running the furnace, fans, TV, DVD, LED lights and it didn't even keep the battery from going into float by 9 am. The rest of the day the solar runs the trailer by it self and could have easily supported limited use of a larger inverter.
So if you use say 50 amp hours a day, you need to have 150 amp hours of usable battery to go for three days without charging. The solar will produce a minimal amount to stretch your battery but eventually you will need a alternate means of charging. without a generator with us, our alternate is a pair of jumper cables and the truck but we only go for a week or two at a time right now. I don't worry because with our solar and bank a week in overcast weather is no sweat as long as we don't run the air conditioner.
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