Going solar

I just set up our camper to go to South America, basically independent of any electricity. I used a rebuilt 2kw MSW Magnum inverter as it has a charger also and mine was of the old junk ones. I have 4 size 24 batteries in the wheel wells, 3 Renogy 100 watt panels(cheap on EBAY) on the roof with a PWM(should have gotten PMMT) Morningstar Prostar solar control and set up a #4 wire feed from the truck. It takes the 2kw to run the microwave as a 800 watt microwave seems to draw about 1.5kw as Sleepy said. The microwave doesn't like the MSW inverter as some other load seems to be needed to get the inverter working, then it works fine. We have spent one weekend out boondocking in the south San Juan Mountains in Colorado and overnight with a movie, lights, dinner and then making breakfast in the microwave and coffee in the morning we end up using about 20% of our battery capacity. With the solar we were back up to 97% at the end of the day minimum. A three week real shakedown trip back to the midwest starts next week.

Buy panels to fit the space and get as many watts as will go in the space. The cabling is horrendous for this, figure over $500. The inverter and batteries are connected with 2/0 cable and routing was a real project. Connections are Anderson from electric forklifts and golf carts. It's basically no project for the timid on non-mechanical person. There is almost as much information on the internet as needed, advice and moral support from some overlanders(or folks like Sleepy)who have been thru everything is also necessary(thank you Tony Lee).

If I had had a good modern charger I would have gotten a SAMLEX 2kw as less expensive, the new Xantrex inverters do not "appear" to be as good quality as the older ones. When I had questions about the Magnum I got immediate help from them and their installation and operation manual is an entire notebook.

If you have any questions PM me.