Solar & Inverter starting point advice

kfp673 wrote:
Hello All,

We seem to be dry camping more and more over the past 2 years. Mostly in state forrest land with dedicated sites but the sites are roughly 1/4-1/2 mile between each site. This spring I upgraded from a single 12v to dual 6V batteries. Now when camping in 40 degree nights my furnace makes it well into the morning and even into the afternoon vs 3 or 4am with the old 12v. So our current routine is running generator for about 2 hours in the morning while we make coffee and breakfast, and then about 2 hours in the evening as my kids are winding down and watching a movie before bed. The rest of the day and all night I prefer to leave generators off and 4 hours seems to be enough to charge the batteries enough to hold over another night.

Anyway,I'd love to cut that back even further and give the ability to run a coffee maker, TV, and other devices off 12v. Please point me in a direction of where to start looking at inverters. Are there good posts explaining how and where to install them? Also, what size solar kit is fairly affordable and makes enough power to maybe cut an hour or two off my generator running?

Thanks!

So here's what i did. This isn't the only way but I'm all in for about $2300 total.

4-130 watt Kyocera used panels from Craigslist. $260
1-Magnum 1000 watt MMS1012 inverter/charger. $737
1-Magnum MM-RC50 inverter remote. $172
2 Crown 240 ah CR-240 batteries. $270
1-Bogart TM-2030-RV battery monitor.$158
1-Morningstar TS-45 charge controller. $143
1- 500 amp shunt. $34
Misc hardware & wiring $500.

The only this I wish i had done differently would be to get a larger inverter. I installed a 1000 watt and wish it was at least a 2000 watt.

We watch TV, run the furnace over night, charge the laptop, charge two phones and run my wifes CPAP machine. Batteries are at about 65%-70% by morning and back to 100% by 1:00-2:00. Basically the system works flawlessly for us.