How much solar?
I am planning to put a 12/110v TruckFridge in my camper. I had a 12/110v Engel that takes about the same amount of juice as the Truckfridge. I got along fine with no solar and could go 2 days and ...
Forum Discussion
We TC folks have a unique problem and that is roof area avail for solar.
First thing to do is get up on your roof and find out how much room you have.
Go to :
http://www.solar-electric.com/solarpanels.html
And :
http://www.solarblvd.com/
Look at the dimensions and wattage.
I wanted over 160watts and 2 panels. I made cardboard templates for the panels I wanted and found how they would fit... I was able to install 2 100watt panels. I wanted to be able to move around on the top of my camper too without crawling over panels. You can see by my pictures that I accomplished that.
I would install a minimum of 120 watts.
Although we rarely use more than 20ah of battery a night even watching a movie and running the laptop we are able to recover the used AH. We like to be up in the mountains and along the coast so there are times that we have reduced sun intensity.... We rarely need to run the genny.
Before we added led lights, got rid of our tube tv and installed an led tv and installed a wave-3 heater we would gobble 30-40ah a day..
I am able to run with only 1 100ah agm lifeline battery now instead of 2 group27's...
We have been running this configuration for 3 years now. We do not think of saving AH any more...
There are several of us in the TC forum that are lean AH users and have less than 150ah of battery.
Jim
First thing to do is get up on your roof and find out how much room you have.
Go to :
http://www.solar-electric.com/solarpanels.html
And :
http://www.solarblvd.com/
Look at the dimensions and wattage.
I wanted over 160watts and 2 panels. I made cardboard templates for the panels I wanted and found how they would fit... I was able to install 2 100watt panels. I wanted to be able to move around on the top of my camper too without crawling over panels. You can see by my pictures that I accomplished that.
I would install a minimum of 120 watts.
Although we rarely use more than 20ah of battery a night even watching a movie and running the laptop we are able to recover the used AH. We like to be up in the mountains and along the coast so there are times that we have reduced sun intensity.... We rarely need to run the genny.
Before we added led lights, got rid of our tube tv and installed an led tv and installed a wave-3 heater we would gobble 30-40ah a day..
I am able to run with only 1 100ah agm lifeline battery now instead of 2 group27's...
We have been running this configuration for 3 years now. We do not think of saving AH any more...
There are several of us in the TC forum that are lean AH users and have less than 150ah of battery.
Jim
