solar power help

Four of these would be great. Is $1,200 a lot of money?
www.bestconverter.com/GPL-4CT-6-Volt-220-Amp-Hour Lifeline


Compare price at you local dealer before you click and buy.

I would try to avoid four 12v in parallel to avoid balance issues. This is the reason I suggest 6v format with 2 parallel and 2 series.

Most will disagree but I unhooked all the phantom load culprits and replaced them with battery powered models. Smoke detector, CO detector. I have to replace the batteries annually but unless I leave a light on there are no nasty surprises and I have exactly the same safety measures that I do at home.

I know that my batterys are junk as 1 cell is frozen soild so need to be replaced want to replace with good ones only had rv for 1 year hopeing to retire in next 2 years need to learn as much as I can about the inner working of rv thanks to everybody for your help

mrflakey wrote:
I have 2 100 watt panels and 30amp controller to charge 2 12volt batterys would like to know what size agm batterys to buy need help am a newbe with all this thank you

Rule of thumb 100 watts of solar per 100 Ah of battery.
This low for most RV's

Much better to do an energy audit first. This will determine what you need in Ah's of battery. From there you can determine what you need in the way of solar.

I guess it mainly depends on your budget, and what will fit. Weight is also a big concern too.

200 AH is what I would consider the minimum for a RV. IF you have solar, then you do not need to store as much power, as you are making a lot each day.

Think of it like a water tank. If you must withdraw 35 gallons per day, and need to stay for say 5 days, then you know how much you must start with. But if the solar is putting back 50 AH daily, then storing more than about 200 AH is not required in your case, as you will gain 50 AH daily.

Your RV will consume about 35 AH daily just to run the CO meter, propane leak detector and refrigerator.

The water pump is insignificant load, as it will pump 2 GPM drawing 7 amps per hour, or empty a 120 gallon tank with only about 7 amp hours.

Have fun camping!

Fred.

A couple of good brands are Lifeline and Universal. BestConverter.com carries both for good prices.

If you are running lights and TV I'd think that a 200AH bank would be enough. I'm surprised your current one is not sufficient as it looks like you have 2 160AH batteries? A 200AH bank gives you a 100AH usable output your panels should easily replace 100AH per day. If I read right and you have 320AH now or 160AH usable I think your batteries are not functioning well?

AGM's often have a lower amp-hour rating than a flooded jar of the same dimensions.

If you boondock, a case could be made for installing the largest AGM that will fit the space.

200 watts is enough to service about 300 amp-hours of battery bank. Under perfect solar conditions it may return about 90 to 100 amp-hours per day to the system.

Do an energy audit by plugging the rv into a kill-a-watt and plugging the kill-a-watt into a 15 amp shore power supply. Monitor use for a few days.

I have a coleman 12v 30a controller will go to 14.5 volts will run led lights have power inverter to run tvs but what is a good agm battery to have would like to have more power right now I have 2 12 voltwet cell batterys that are rated 20 hr rate 160ah

If the existing seems short on power I would go bigger.
Generally 200 to 400 amp hours.