Solar and battery help
Good Morning. I am hoping someone can provide a simple answer or 4 for me. I just read a post on the TC forum about flexible, light weight 100 watt solar panels and love the look of this, I have a Nor...
Forum Discussion
RC 160 does not indicate amphours and most group 27 batteries hover around 100 amphours give or take and that is for a 100% fully charged, non-sulphated battery in prime condition.
Adding a second battery would indeed add amphours, but the second battery will be dragged down by the older battery. You would add the amphours if using 12 volt jars giving you around 200 amphours with roughly 100 amphours to burn before reaching 50% discharge. Of course these are estimates and real world performance is usually lower than expected. Pairing batteries of the same age, specs, and manufacturer would yield better results.
As long as amps don't exceed a controllers capabilities you could group as many as the controller is rated to handle. A 100 watt panel will require a 10amp controller, but you could group four 100watt panels on a 30amp controller. The max amps delivered by the 100watt panel will only occur for a few hours a day if conditions are ideal.
That is not an easy question to answer as there are too many variables involved. The main concern is what exactly do you expect from your solar array. Are you needing to get through a few days of camping and just need to get battery bank to roughly 80-90% SOC, or are you planning month long excursions where you want to reach full SOC on a regular basis.
A 100 watt panel for each battery would be a good start without knowing your actual daily amphour consumption, with decent sunshine you would more than likely get into the 80-90% SOC daily which is fine for a week or so of camping. Actual results will vary of course, metering the amount of amphours you consume and amps delivered by your solar array will yield pertinent information for fine tuning your system to achieve the expected results you desire.
Solar has worked well for us, but camping in the White Mountains of NM or AZ in our neck of the woods usually means that solar will be limited due to the tree cover, for those situations we use our generator and Iota converter to quickly restore consumed amphours.
Additionally, having the genny along we can run high amperage items like the microwave/convection oven, AC unit, portable space heaters, and heated hair appliances used by my DW and 3 DDs when camping off the power grid. We prefer boondocking and being 100% self-contained makes everybody happy knowing we can power our entire rig as if we were connected to shore power.
Adding a second battery would indeed add amphours, but the second battery will be dragged down by the older battery. You would add the amphours if using 12 volt jars giving you around 200 amphours with roughly 100 amphours to burn before reaching 50% discharge. Of course these are estimates and real world performance is usually lower than expected. Pairing batteries of the same age, specs, and manufacturer would yield better results.
As long as amps don't exceed a controllers capabilities you could group as many as the controller is rated to handle. A 100 watt panel will require a 10amp controller, but you could group four 100watt panels on a 30amp controller. The max amps delivered by the 100watt panel will only occur for a few hours a day if conditions are ideal.
That is not an easy question to answer as there are too many variables involved. The main concern is what exactly do you expect from your solar array. Are you needing to get through a few days of camping and just need to get battery bank to roughly 80-90% SOC, or are you planning month long excursions where you want to reach full SOC on a regular basis.
A 100 watt panel for each battery would be a good start without knowing your actual daily amphour consumption, with decent sunshine you would more than likely get into the 80-90% SOC daily which is fine for a week or so of camping. Actual results will vary of course, metering the amount of amphours you consume and amps delivered by your solar array will yield pertinent information for fine tuning your system to achieve the expected results you desire.
Solar has worked well for us, but camping in the White Mountains of NM or AZ in our neck of the woods usually means that solar will be limited due to the tree cover, for those situations we use our generator and Iota converter to quickly restore consumed amphours.
Additionally, having the genny along we can run high amperage items like the microwave/convection oven, AC unit, portable space heaters, and heated hair appliances used by my DW and 3 DDs when camping off the power grid. We prefer boondocking and being 100% self-contained makes everybody happy knowing we can power our entire rig as if we were connected to shore power.
