How much solar for cloudy weather
Greetings,
Hopefully some of you solar mavens lend some sage advice here. My current set up is:
26' TT, one 12v marine Costco battery. 2 solar panels: a 32watt and a 43 watt that aren't roof mounted, I move them around as needed. This setup has met our needs just fine during winter desert camping trips for 2+ weeks. Until this year that is. This year, we had 5 straight days of cloudy weather where the sun couldn't be seen at all. My solar couldn't keep up with our power usage. We do use all LED lights inside. Our power consumption consists of lights, water pump, and charging the iphone or camera batteries.
So after that I want to be able to keep the battery charged up in cloudy weather. I'm considering either upgrading my solar to a much higher wattage or getting a portable generator.
I prefer the solar solution if I can harvest enough power in the clouds to charge my battery. I have found a 12v, 155 AH golf cart battery that would be a good start, but I want to use up the current battery first, as it's only 2 y/o.
Do you think 200 watts of panel with an MPPT controller would be sufficient? Or do I need 300+ watts for charging in clouds? Or am I better off just keeping what I have and getting a little Honda EU2000 for cloudy weather boondocking?
Thanks a ton and happy travels.
David
Hopefully some of you solar mavens lend some sage advice here. My current set up is:
26' TT, one 12v marine Costco battery. 2 solar panels: a 32watt and a 43 watt that aren't roof mounted, I move them around as needed. This setup has met our needs just fine during winter desert camping trips for 2+ weeks. Until this year that is. This year, we had 5 straight days of cloudy weather where the sun couldn't be seen at all. My solar couldn't keep up with our power usage. We do use all LED lights inside. Our power consumption consists of lights, water pump, and charging the iphone or camera batteries.
So after that I want to be able to keep the battery charged up in cloudy weather. I'm considering either upgrading my solar to a much higher wattage or getting a portable generator.
I prefer the solar solution if I can harvest enough power in the clouds to charge my battery. I have found a 12v, 155 AH golf cart battery that would be a good start, but I want to use up the current battery first, as it's only 2 y/o.
Do you think 200 watts of panel with an MPPT controller would be sufficient? Or do I need 300+ watts for charging in clouds? Or am I better off just keeping what I have and getting a little Honda EU2000 for cloudy weather boondocking?
Thanks a ton and happy travels.
David
