solar costs pie

[pianotuna]

Hi,

This puts things in a nice perspective for non mobile installations.

[Almot]

Don - yes, in RV there are always some batteries before you install solar. Unless it's a predominantly hook-up user with a tiny single battery, no immediate upgrade is needed.

OTH, in shore homes there is more reason to include the cost of battery, because an offgrid home on solar needs a larger bank than when it was on generator only. The guys from Trina Solar chose to ignore this fact.
(In RV upgrading the bank is less crucial - you can use an alternator, or trips are short etc).

Inverter should be counted as a solar part. And, there is a big discrepancy in this part cost when you compare shore home to RV. In RV it's more often an "inverter", can be big or small or none. In shore home it's (usually) a more expensive inverter-charger because majority of solar homes have a generator as a part of their offgrid system.

In the end, this all is an academic talk. Just wanted to point out that a solar for shore home and RV are two different creatures. Ex., this is first time that I learned about existence of such an important cost item as "racking" (for shore homes) - with a whooping 34% cost. I probably didn't spend more than $15 on "racking" for my 500W RV system :)...

[pianotuna]

Hi Almot,

The question is, for an RV, what is solar and what is not.

There is almost always some sort of (inadequate) battery bank. Does beefing that up count towards the cost of a solar system?

Lots of folks still manage with either a tiny inverter, or none at all. Most folks who boondock have something--so again should this be counted towards the cost of a solar system in an RV?

[Almot]

The key word is "non mobile". Very different from RV installations.

With 500W system on RV you'll pay, say, $1,200 parts cost with inverter. Alright, add $500 for installer, total $1,700. This would include maybe $80 or 5% in cables (before and after controller), and few bucks worth of "racking" - aluminum stock for mounting brackets.

In shore installations they use term "inverter" for what is in fact inverter-charger. Most shore users don't know what "inverter" in itself means.