will solar keep the batteries charged

[rbp111]

I had my fifth-wheel in for service and they kept it for over 8 weeks (another story). There was no electricity hooked up, so the batteries ran out.

My question is this. If I had, say a 150 Watt solar panel on the roof, and there was no use of the items except for the ones such as the parasitic types, would the batteries have gone "out". I have no knowledge of solar equipment, obviously.

[MEXICOWANDERER]

First
Install a genuine battery cutoff switch. Many eamples with photos on these pages.

Create a label
DIRECT SHORT! DO NOT OPERATE!
Label to be pasted near the new switch. It's the truth and scares the hell out of 89 IQ types.

[JiminDenver]

wrong thread oops

[JiminDenver]

The last time I took our trailer in to the dealer, they told me to disconnect the battery.

[Muddydogs]

After reading on here about dead batteries when leaving RV's at dealers I unhooked my solar system and removed the batteries and propane tanks when I left my rig at the dealer 3 weeks ago. Figure if they need power they can find a battery but I am not going to let them wreck my batterys.

[RJsfishin]

A 100 watt panel will do it. Or if it didn't, I'd fix it !

[TurnThePage]

I have 150 watts of solar and very rarely ever charge my batteries any other way. My converter has been shut off for over a year now. I don't even know if it works.

[MrWizard]

short answer .. yes it can

long answer.. will it ?
depends on the loads and the weather and what happens with the service people, lights left on etc..
for 8 weeks i will assume it was out side in the sun and since it was 'summer time' should have got enough avg Sunny days to have kept the batteries charged

[2oldman]

If you don't know what an amp-hour is, read here:

This is RV electric 101. 12v side of life.

[Crazy_Ray]

What size btry bank do you have?

[christopherglen]

150 watts will put 50-80 amp hours a day into the batteries. With the fridge off, you are needing 10-20 amp hours a day for the typical parasitic loads - propane detector, radio memory, some smoke detectors, TV antenna amp. Turn everything you can off - an inverter in standby can pull an amp or more an hour (the larger ones).

[2oldman]

You can gain knowledge of solar by reading posts about it on here.

[JiminDenver]

That depends on what the parasitic loads are and weather conditions. Then again if they didn't need those systems running, you could have charged the batteries and disconnected them.

[westend]

Yes, a 150W solar panel will keep your batteries charged (as long as it has sunlight on it).