New Solar Install
Guys, a good friend of mine reached out to the folks at camping world. They gave him a quote for 510watts of panels, some GC batteries (AGM) and controllers etc. We all agree before you start d...
Forum Discussion
CA Traveler wrote:
My first purchase was a battery monitor...
100% yes.
Suggestion to your friend...
Buy and install a battery monitor. (I use one by Aili which only costs ~$45 and works great).
Go on 1 or 2 vacations. Make sure he starts with 100% fully charged batteries. Monitor what happens on his vacation regarding his batteries and he will have an accurate picture of exactly how many AHs he is using. Since he has a generator(s) he can use those on these vacations. This will guide him to the answer of how many battery AHs he needs and how much solar.
Side note: 2amp worth of phantom leak is A LOT. That's 24AH per day. That is a recipe for dead dead batteries after just 5-6 days of forgetting about it (ie. storage). Batteries getting drained to 0% is what kills battery life the fastest. It would be well worth his time to figure that problem out. For reference, when I park my RV and turn off my battery disconnect (standard one by the side entrance of many RVs) my phantom draw is about 0.15 amps...about 3 amps per day.
Good luck!
Chris
