Sizing a battery bank. Ah VS wh?
Hi again!
So, I'm trying to size out the battery bank I will need for my husband and I to live off grid in a camper. We don't have tons of time or money, so that's a bit of a factor. We plan on using an inverter for pretty much everything. And using either standard lead acid batts or agm. We plan on getting a few solar panels and possibly a small generator if needed.
I've read tons of forums and watched hundreds of youtube videos and it seems like everyone I look into tells me something vastly different, from calculations and formulas to bank size & voltage and so on.
I believe we need roughly 2510 watt hours.
I calculated this by getting the watts of each appliance and multiplying it by the number of hours we'd use it each day.
I tried to do the same thing with amps. I divided the watts by volts to get amps then multiplied it by how many hours we'd use it. I came up with 202 amp hours.
I've read that some folks use 6v batts and wire them both in series and parallel to equal 12v with higher amps, while others just use 12 in parallel, or wire in series for 24v or even 48v.
What really confuses me here is that from what I understand the concern should be amp hour capacity? Or should it be watts hour capacity?
I've seen people ramp up their watt hours by using 24v and 48v batteries while the amps stay quite low. While others ramp up the amp hours by using 6v golf cart batts and get tons of amp hours.
Which one should I be concerned about and why? Do they equal the same thing essentially?
And how in the world do I figure out a batt bank that will fit our needs with all this contradicting info. I'm stumped, lol.
Thanks for reading, looking forward to your responses.
So, I'm trying to size out the battery bank I will need for my husband and I to live off grid in a camper. We don't have tons of time or money, so that's a bit of a factor. We plan on using an inverter for pretty much everything. And using either standard lead acid batts or agm. We plan on getting a few solar panels and possibly a small generator if needed.
I've read tons of forums and watched hundreds of youtube videos and it seems like everyone I look into tells me something vastly different, from calculations and formulas to bank size & voltage and so on.
I believe we need roughly 2510 watt hours.
I calculated this by getting the watts of each appliance and multiplying it by the number of hours we'd use it each day.
I tried to do the same thing with amps. I divided the watts by volts to get amps then multiplied it by how many hours we'd use it. I came up with 202 amp hours.
I've read that some folks use 6v batts and wire them both in series and parallel to equal 12v with higher amps, while others just use 12 in parallel, or wire in series for 24v or even 48v.
What really confuses me here is that from what I understand the concern should be amp hour capacity? Or should it be watts hour capacity?
I've seen people ramp up their watt hours by using 24v and 48v batteries while the amps stay quite low. While others ramp up the amp hours by using 6v golf cart batts and get tons of amp hours.
Which one should I be concerned about and why? Do they equal the same thing essentially?
And how in the world do I figure out a batt bank that will fit our needs with all this contradicting info. I'm stumped, lol.
Thanks for reading, looking forward to your responses.
