Practical use of solar

BFL13-WESTEND I'm hoping for similar results with my two 120WATTs Panels on the front and had planned for a 120WATT on the rear of my OFF-ROAD POPUP roof. I might be able to go with a 240WATT panel on the rear.

Can't wait until I start running some trips after all is setup...

I know what to expect with the batteries by them self so any improvement with SOLAR will be icing on the cake...

Roy Ken

I run an AC fridge and don't like messing with generators (less is better). Since I've installed solar, one of the better things I've discovered is that the solar controller treats the batteries better than a converter or charger. Also, I like to camp in any other place than a campground.

We started off trying to do say two weeks off grid by doing the "50-90" method if cycling the batteries where about every two days we ran the gen for two hours and charged the batts back up to 90 from 50.

By week 2, it happened that the battery capacity had become less and less each time we did a 50-90, so that by the end, we just had to find shore power to get the batts back to 100% and reconditioned, desulphated, shampooed, etc.

"Some solar" fixed that, so now we can go forever off grid. It seems the batts don't get so sulphated when doing say 85-97s on solar as when doing 50-90s. Apparently the secret is to get closer to 100 (97 vs 90) on each recharge. Not perfect but you can make up the diff every so often by going to 100% using the solar where you let batt voltage climb into the 15s voltage range.

If you are only going out for a week at a time you don't need solar at all. You do 50-90s and then go home and nurse the batts back to full capacity in slow time on shore power.

For camping in the woods in winter here, solar is a waste of space. Little daylight time each day, under trees anyway, so you still need the gen to do your 50-90s except now it is so cold the furnace is eating a lot of battery and solar would have no hope of keeping up.

So it turns out we have portable solar for the nice half of the year and where we camp on the open we get lots of sun and we can do it mostly on solar with a few generator sessions if the weather goes bad for a few days. No more having to go home because the batteries have lost so much capacity from successive 50-90s.

Another benefit of solar, when camping activities are slow at times, and if you are easily amused, is that solar is constantly changing how much you are getting and you can get sort of involved in how it is going like a cheerleader or groupie. :)

smkettner wrote:

Gjac wrote:
90% of the camping I do is dry camping but I always run out of water before I run out of battery power.

I would focus on the water supply and conservation first. The three of us can go a week with our 50 gal on board supply.

For me the excess solar gives DW comfort that we don't have to plug in so much.
So it is different for everyone.

I have 60 gals of FW and It lasts about a week if there is no other water sources around. After a week my 2 Sam's Club batteries will be around 50 % SOC. I don't need the genset to recharge the batteries for the week. I was just wondering how many days in a row do you dry camp before you decided you needed solar power? From some replies it sounds like some decided because needing/wanting 120v conveniences like TV,etc.

I have 475 watts of solar power on my rig. Love it! I'm never out of power and can power nearly anything we want (TV, laptop, toaster, hair dryer, etc...).

I'm running 220 amp-hours of battery (9 years old). I know the general rule is 1 amp-hour per watt, however we quite often camp (90%) in shaded areas so the extra wattage doesn't hurt. And, if you happen to be camping in an open area with good sunlight (like I was last weekend), we run the fridge on electric during the best part of day so the power isn't wasted.

The only thing I would use a generator for is Air Conditioning...and where we camp, there are very few days where we would have liked to have AC.

As far as water goes, there is usually a pump in the campground. We can always fill up there.

I just picked up a 160W portable panel. This allows me to park in the shade and move the panels into a sunnier spot away from the trailer.

Wife and I love that there is no loud stinky generator. I would recommend this mod to everyone.

Thought process:
Wanted power, but didn't want to deal with generator issues.
Too afraid to put holes in roof of trailer to mount solar panels.
Found inexpensive portable system, bought it!

I got mine from Solarblvd, but they appear to be out of stock right now. Now I don't worry about power while camping, its on to worrying about the water.

I like the baby steps here...

I would get as efficient as I could camping off the batteries and using Inverter and direct battery connections to run all of the things you want to have available for your use when camping off the power grid. You will want to start out with at least 220AHs of battery capacity to even think about camping off the power grid.

We have been camping off the power grid since 2008 in my OFF-ROAD POPUP setup and finally mastered the "running off the batteries" pretty good now. I can truly say we are very successful in our style of camping which is alot more than just having a couple of lights on in the trailer...

Now that I know what to expect I think it is time for us to also start looking into getting some additional power resources from SOLAR PANELS. To me the generator method is the only true 'must have' resource as it will always be available to use for you no matter what the circumstances are (Rain or Shine).

I am looking at the SOLAR PANEL addition to supplement the charging of my batteries and reduce generator operations. I am initially thinking of just three 120WATT Solar panels on the roof of my OFF-ROAD POPUP. Our setup requires a battery bank re-charge as quick as it will work each day when allowed to run the generator. The SOLAR panels in my case will provide a slower battery bank re-charge during the remaining high sun day. A typical 120WATT Solar panel will only produce around 5-6AMPS of usable DC CURRENT in high SUN. I'm guessing I will only have HIGH SUN for 5-6 hours a day here on the East side of the US if that... If you can get ahead of the battery drain curve it would be real great just trickle charging the battery bank with solar panels.

IN my case of pulling around 20AMPS from the batteries between 8PM to 11PM in addition to a parasitic battery drain of around 1AMP for the other 21 hours in a day will most likely never allow me to just trickle charge the batteries. This daily power drain drops me to 12.0VDC around 8AM each day now which puts me in a required full smart mode re-charge.

My success in running off the power grid with the battery bank is always starting out each day/night battery run with a good 90% charge state giving me almost full battery performance. I can do this now using the generator for a three hour generator run time so adding the modest solar panel capability should reduce the generator run time considerable.

Maybe use the generator for the first hour of high current re-charge and then switch to solar panels for the lower current charge for the remaining high sun day. I suspect since my battery bank is down to the 50% charge state at 8AM each morning I will always have to use the generator to get past the initial high current battery demand when in BOOST 14.4VDC Charge mode and then the lower DC CURRENT being produced by the solar panels will get my battery bank to its required 90% charge state before I run out of HIGH SUN.

After getting more experience of using the Solar Panels I am being told by the experts on here I can really expect to be using the generator less and less each day. My goal still remains I have to start each day/night run off my batteries with the batteries being at the 90% state of charge otherwise it will get dark on me around 10PM each night. We really start using the trailer batteries pretty heavy around 7-8PM each day. When I see the batteries drop to around 12.0VDC I will shut them down to prevent doing damage to the batteries.

These are going to be my baby steps getting into the solar panels... It has taken me a few years to get to this point since starting out with my OFF-ROAD POPUP setup in late 2008.

Roy Ken

Gjac wrote:
I have always thought that solar would be a nice mod to make and there seems to be a wealth of knowledge here about solar. However, I'd like to hear your thought processes before you did this mod. Is there some basic requirements before going to solar? How many days do you camp in a row before you need solar power. If you camp in NF's CG's most of the time how do you get sun? Those that have made this mod do most of you camp out west? Are most of you full time? 90% of the camping I do is dry camping but I always run out of water before I run out of battery power.

Before we went solar the we used a big loud generator two hours a day to keep our single battery charged up. The plan was to get a small inverter generator for charging and keep the big one for the rare occasion we needed the air conditioning. The solar replaced the need for the smaller generator.

We camp at high altitude in the Rockies of Colorado. Generally it is sunny at least a part of the day except for the monsoon season. We can go three to five days on the bank we have now without any charging and even though we do have LED lighting, we don't conserve in any other way. It's cooler more often than hot up there and down right cold at night so we keep the furnace at 74. We watch TV, DVD's, have music and keep phones and such charged up without worry.

Our general trip is a week and we have a limit of two weeks before we have to come out of the hills for food, water and dumping the tanks. Power wise we never needed the generator last year even with a few cloudy stretches.

Most days the battery was in float by 9 am and the solar ran the trailer the rest of the day. We were only on the battery at night.

I had no plan to even get solar. It was too expensive at the time and I really didn't understand it. The first part changed when I found two panels on craigslist so cheap I couldn't pass them up. It took a year of reading and finding the parts just to make one of the panels into a simple portable system but it was well worth it. it is 230w and can be set in the sun while the trailer is in the shade. It can also track the sun producing more than if it were mounted. Now after using it for a year I have a much better handle on our needs and solar. The next step is to mount two panels on the roof so that I never have to think about it. (Those were also on craiglist for a too good to pass up price) We also added a satellite system and want to change the battery banks around to be able to run a microwave off of a inverter. Anything but listen to a generator.

There are inexpensive portable kits that you could use to get your feet wet in solar. It would give you a idea of if it would work for you without a huge outlay of cash.

For me, it isn't the expense. Part of it is the fact that my rig won't have shore power access, so it needs a method of the batteries being maintained. I could take the batteries with me, but it adds additional time. Another part is the noise.

Even my relatively quiet Yamaha 3000 watt generator is loud in a forest. Part of boondocking is to get away from urban noise, and unless I have to run a generator for the A/C, I want to do my best so I don't have to. This way, when the weather gets cold, the electricity used by the furnace blower is more than made up for by a solar charging system. The solar system won't pay me back immediately (although fuel costs have nowhere to go but up), but it provides a much higher quality of camping when a generator is not needed unless the A/C is run. Even the microwave can be run for a few minutes with a larger battery bank without issue.

Of course, there are fuel costs. Once the solar system is in place, pretty much it is set and forget. There are people on rv.net who have solar systems that are 10+ years old and are still working without issue. To get a battery to near 100% SoC takes a lot of energy, and while solar can do it for $0, it would take many gallons of fuel to have the generator run long enough to do the same thing.