Solar Reason to do a 1500 Pure Sine instead of 600

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tanglemoose

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May 14, 2013
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We picked up the new RV... 2017 Cougar 26' Travel Trailer and now are having our solar installed. Had a system on the last one and loved it... So... we were going to do 160 watts on the roof again with controller inside, just like this. http://gpelectric.com/products/overlander-solar-kit. I had purchased a 300 watt modified sin inverter to just put into the cig. lighter to run TV last time. It worked, but not great.  This time I was thinking I wanted a 600 watt GP-sw600 with 600 output and has a 860 surge watts... this http://gpelectric.com/products/600-watt-pure-sine-wave-inverter  and has to have some cable with it...

Today I am looking at the GoPower site and I see this package. Yes it is 650 more... and NO we are not installing... labor about the same..
http://gpelectric.com/products/weekender-sw-charging-system

I am wondering about the jump to a 1500, I know it will run more.. probably not my ac or coffee pot... so what am I gaining. And explain this transfer switch that is included in this package...

I have already sweet talked the other half into adding the 600 Watt pure sine wave inverter... not sure I can stretch it out for the extra boost..

We do have generator and hate to use it.. We do camp a lot with no hookups, probably 85% of the time. We rarely need Ac as we camp at 6000' and above generally. The 600 will charge my laptop. Don't need to charge phones, dog collar and anything else USB our RV has charging station for those...

Thanks! Know a lot of you know LOTS about this solar, switches, etc. 
Donna

PS. We are putting on two 6 volt batteries...
 
With only two six volt batteries, and 160 watts of solar, you would never be able to even come close to using the full output of a 1500 watt inverter.  Unless, you are planning on adding a lot more solar, and at least two more batteries in the future, I would go with the 600 watt.  If you need to run something more than your 600 watt inverter would require, it would be more practical to used the generator.
 
I disagree, with 2 batteries you can easily use the full output of a 1500 watt or even a 2000 watt inverter, the catch is you can't do it for long.  However one thing a 1500 watt sine wave inverter does for you is that it will power most microwave ovens.  Sure the batteries will not let you cook a turkey in the microwave, but who wants to do that anyway.  What it will let you do is warm things up, cook microwave popcorn, make instant oatmeal on a cold morning, and all those other little things without firing up the noisy generator.
 
Isaac-1 said:
I disagree, with 2 batteries you can easily use the full output of a 1500 watt or even a 2000 watt inverter, the catch is you can't do it for long.  However one thing a 1500 watt sine wave inverter does for you is that it will power most microwave ovens.  Sure the batteries will not let you cook a turkey in the microwave, but who wants to do that anyway.  What it will let you do is warm things up, cook microwave popcorn, make instant oatmeal on a cold morning, and all those other little things without firing up the noisy generator.

I didnt say it was impossible, I said it wasnt practical. One problem is that if your batteries are not fully charged, it would be very easy for the 1500 watt inverter to pull the battery voltage down so low as to reach the low voltage cut off on the inverter.
 
For what it's worth....you could get a 200W Renogy rooftop solar with controller and the mounting doodads for less than the GP 160W kit.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B015DEY2TM/ref=ox_sc_act_title_4?ie=UTF8&psc=1&smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER

And a Samlex full sine 600W inverter for $175......

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004OU3A5Y/ref=ox_sc_act_title_2?ie=UTF8&psc=1&smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER

Both for less than the GP unit alone.

I use the Samlex 300W inverter and it runs a laptop and a radio together.....all day every day. (direct connect to the batt)
 
I bought a 100 watt Renogy branded panel off ebay a few months ago for use with a remote wifi gate camera, while it seems to work, I am not impressed by the construction, and would not  mount one to something that needs to go down the road at 65+ mph.  The frame was built from U channel only on 2 sides with the ends being L channel.  By contrast I bought a 100 watt New-Powa branded panels a few months earlier for a different project which seemed much more robust in its construction using U channel all the way around, and the framing seemed thicker overall although I did not measure it, so that may be my imagination and only cost about $10 more than the Renogy. On a downside the Newpowa panel did have a blemish on the backing which I hope is only cosmetic.

p.s. as to the use of a microwave oven, as mentioned above I was mostly talking about using a microwave oven for things that have short cooking times say 1-3 minutes.  Lets assume a typical small microwave oven which will draw roughly 1,000 watts running, lets assume the batteries are Trojan T105 golf cart batteries rated at 115 minutes of run time at 75 amp rate.  (75 amps at 12V is roughly 900 watts), lets do a little rough rounding and keeping to the generally accepted rule of 50% max discharge on a deep cycle battery to maintain optimal life and we get roughly 50 minutes of run time for a small microwave oven on a fully charged pair of T105's, that is a lot of microwavable oatmeal for those early mornings when you don't want to disturb the tranquility by running your generator.  As to the solar panel side of the equation, assuming your microwavable food of choice takes 3 minutes to cook, that is roughly 50 watt hours drained from the batteries, now taking into account charge losses, less than optimal tilt on panels, etc. worst case is you are using less than 1 hour of your available peak sunlight on a typical day with a 160 watt solar panel to recharge the battery from what your warm breakfast consumed from the batteries.  Having said this, all these numbers look better with more solar panels. 

Also in case you are wondering I have a 2,000 watt pure sine wave inverter and 400 watts of solar panels
 
We just stayed with 600... I rarely use microwave, even oatmeal can be stove top... decided the extra money I can spendo on a tailgater 2 for our directtv
 
We have two Renogy RNG ? 100D 100W monocrystalline solar panels on our van roof and they work fine and seem to me well mounted.  I have no concerns about them on the van.
 

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Had 2 renogy panels for 1 year..bought two more and now had all 4 installed on roof. Love the setup. The pro installers do not gush over my choice of panels but say Renogy is coming on stronger as time goes by. Works for me. I love not firing up the genset to make my first cup of joe each morning.
 
My remote panel for the new inverter reads out in amps at the present moment. Im not sure about the coffee maker but the big microwave took over 200 amps to run..but just for a few minutes..I was impressed!! Im sure there is a chart that converts watts to amps and vice versa
 
tanglemoose said:
How many watts do you need to make coffee?
John or anyone else know???
Our 12 cup coffee maker runs off our inverter, and when it's first turned on, our Trimetric battery monitor indicates that it draws about 80 amps - continuously. It pulls that much power for about 10 minutes until it's done heating the water. Then the consumption drops to about 10 amps for as long as the coffee maker stays on.

Kev
 
Amps times Volts equal Watts.

80A at 12V is 960 watts. 

My microwave pulls about 140A at 12V, or 1680watts, so that would be really be overloading a 1500 watt inverter. 
 
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