Enough Solar for conservative boondocking?
Hey Guys, I looked for the "Dumb Questions" thread, but didn't see it, so I'll post my question here. I want to be able to boondock for 3-4 nights with my family of five on our 28 foot TT. I don't p...
Forum Discussion
For whatever it is worth, we do a lot of boondocking. We are just two people, not five. We are very conservative in our use of power. We have two group 31 batteries with 110 amp hours in each. We have a 120 watt portable solar panel.
That setup can keep us topped off for weeks at a time. But we camp in the West, with lots of sunshine most of the year.
It is not hard to do an energy audit of each of your devices, to come up with a cumulative total. You then multiply the data for each device by the number of hours you will use it.
For example, we use our LED lights a lot, but they draw very little. We seldom use our furnace (except at shower time), but it draws a lot.
The other trick is to keep careful track of the state of charge of your battery -- you can then calculate how much of your reserve you use each day. Remember that with an ordinary 12v deep cycle battery, you can only use about half of the capacity. So our 110 a/h batteries really only give us 55 a/h.
That setup can keep us topped off for weeks at a time. But we camp in the West, with lots of sunshine most of the year.
It is not hard to do an energy audit of each of your devices, to come up with a cumulative total. You then multiply the data for each device by the number of hours you will use it.
For example, we use our LED lights a lot, but they draw very little. We seldom use our furnace (except at shower time), but it draws a lot.
The other trick is to keep careful track of the state of charge of your battery -- you can then calculate how much of your reserve you use each day. Remember that with an ordinary 12v deep cycle battery, you can only use about half of the capacity. So our 110 a/h batteries really only give us 55 a/h.
