First real trip out with solar panel

ryanw821 wrote:
I should note, I will post more when I get proper meters, and have some ACTUAL data to share.
This was just meant to be an anecdotal success story based off what my expectations were of the setup I chose, and how it appeared to work over a 3 night weekend trip.

This is the a good beginning. Now that you have the basics down, add 100 more watts and you will probably be good. Yes, the monitor is terrible at telling you anything about the battery.

People report various numbers but my rig sitting idle with the frig on gas, monitor, propane detector and radio off pulls about .6 amps. .6 x 24 hours = 14.4 amp hours. So with about 4.5 amps coming from an 80 watt panel it would take about 3 hours to replace just what I use at idle. It's also unlikely to see 4.5 amps after loses from 80 watts.

Everyone is different so any number can be argued but lets just say that it's going to be very common for a low end user to consume about 30ah per day. 30 ah/4amps=7.5 hours of good sun.

I'm also new to solar but if I threw a number out there for a low energy user to start out at I would say about 200 watts. 200w= about 11 amps but say 9 usable 30ah/9=3.3 hours with good sun. The good thing is that you will start getting charge when it's not full sun yet. You may even get some charge when it's overcast. It's not a lot but it's better than a negative draw.

I hated to run out of power and dw hated it more when I said no TV. I first set up an effective generator/battery charger and usually got by on an hour or so a day of run time. I now went to 520 watts solar and can put back 100 ah pretty easily. Full sun will always give me 24 or so amps. Never tilted.