What can you do with solar?

harold1946 wrote:
I find the difference in systems quite interesting and varied.
I also find it interesting that anyone can say their solar system has made their genny obsolete. They must be fair weather campers only, or real power conservers.
I wonder what they do in situations like 8 days of overcast and rain like we had in Quartzite this year, when even the largest arrays were only able to manage 6 to 8 amps max, and then only at mid day.
Everyone in our area was having to supplement with their genny. Temps in the low 40s at night and mid 50s for the high.

We are both low power users and what you may call fair weather campers. I don't mind freezing weather at night but prefer to be out of the camper as much as possible during the day. So if it's going to rain or be cold all the time, we wait till it's more enjoyable.
Over two seasons we have used 30-40 ah a day and we were not trying to conserve the power our last 10 day trip. We use the LEDs at will, run fans, play music, watch DVDs, use laptops and phones. and run the furnace at nite set to 65.

The battery bank is the last thing to be finished and we will either have 385 ah in 3 banks or 335 ah in two banks. The solar can pull 2.5 amps even in the worse case sun blotted out type overcast situation from sun up till dusk. So even if we can only make back half our needs, it will make the banks last a lot longer. Rarely is it that overcast for long here and we only go for a week or two at a time.

So will the generator go with, yes but I'm hoping to leave it dry unless we need AC which isn't often at 9200 ft.