velcrostrip said:
Gee.. thanks for all the help.
"Help" here doesn't just come in the form of "here's how to do whatever it is you want to do", it also, in the nicest and most well meaning way, comes from those with a variety of experience trying to advise if your plan either isn't going to work and/or isn't going to accomplish what you thought it might. It's still "help", even if it wasn't exactly the "help" you were looking for.
In this case, can it be done? No doubt there are several ways that it can. Will it give you more standby power and allow you to go to bigger, cheaper solar panels? No.
To accomplish your goal of lots of standby power and 1KW of solar, while running a residential fridge and swamp cooler, you'll want:
1) The least expensive panels that also have the density to provide 1KW in the roof area you have available. With my available roof area for example (38' coach) I could only get 800W up there without going to the residential, higher power panels which cost a lot more money and are not warranted for mobile use (vibration, etc). I could have probably gotten 1100+ watts up there but it certainly wouldn't have been cheaper.
2) You'll want your panels on tilt mounts to make the best use of the spring and fall sun
3) You'll want six 6V batteries
4) MPPT solar controller that make the best use of your panels
5) You'll be using a lot of battery power with your fridge so you'll really need to know how much battery you have left to use before you need to fire up the genset and throw some more juice in there. The
Trimetric TM-2030-RV is highly regarded
6) You'll probably need a full sine wave inverter for the fridge although you could go with a properly sized standalone FSW dedicated for fridge use only
7) Don't scrimp on wire size. It makes no sense to put in a cool, high power system with undersized wire that loses 5-10% of your expensive solar power. If there's any doubt, go to the next larger size wire.