You definitely are doing things the way I would do it getting up to the solar panels.. I am currently doing my baby steps doing the DC POWER UPGRADEs getting my OFF-ROAD Trailer ready for solar panels. Good source of Dc POWER, Upgrading to reliable converter/charger unit, adding Inverter and learning how to live with the generator pays off...
I am assuming you are also learning how to increase your living off the batteries by doing DC power savings things like changing incandescent lights over to LEDs. We are living off the power grid just fine with our 255AH Battery bank.
We have been doing all of these things over the past 5 years and really have a great understanding what we can do with our DC BATTERY setup now. We are also just now at the point to start adding solar panels to supplement the Generator to keep our battery banks topped off.
We learned up front the things we can do with the battery banks and have had great success in keeping our 2008 Installed batteries in great shape performance wise. The batteries are just now starting to drop off on performance. The biggest thing we learned was to never allow the battery bank to drop below the 50% charge state and keep them charged to the 90% charge state as soon as possible.
We start this Battery re-charge process every morning at 8AM when we are usually allowed to run our generator where we camp. This takes three hours of generator run time each morning. This is when we make our coffee stored up in thermos for the day.
Adding solar for us will reduce our dependency on the generator to about one a hour a day of run time. My battery bank wil demand over 50AMPS of DC current when first gettig hit with 14.4VDC boost charge. After around an hour this DC CURENT demand will have dropped to around 8AMPs. The solar panels will take over the battery bank charge the rest of the high sun day and hopefully get us to the 90% charge before the high sun goes away.
I am planning to start out with two 120WATT solar panels and eventually add either two additional 120WATT panels later on or maybe just add a larger 240WATT panel. My ultimate goal is to get a good 20AMPS OF DC CURRENT coming from the Solar Panels when in high SUN. This is about all the room I have available for Solar Panels on the roof of my OFF-ROAD trailer.
Doing all of this using baby steps will insure us we have an excellent built-in PLAN B capable battery bank setup by having both the Generator and Solar Panels to keep the battery bank up.
The baby steps for us also has been a great learning experience on what to expect when camping off the power grid and what we need to have to do our style of camping.
I think you are RIGHT ON doing what you are doing...
Roy Ken
