Wireman134 said:
No don't you do without. Spend $5,000-$10,000 on your solar. Then still run your generator to power what it won't. If you insist on solar only you will have to do without or maybe clad the Class A in PV with 2000 ahr battery bank then have at it with all those sunny days down there. Solar is a supplement in a RV platform. To the OP for your usage I'd say 600watt of panels paired with 6- 6 volt GC batteries (300 ahr usable) into a 2000w inverter and hope you have 5 hours of solar noon every other day or so.
At the risk of sounding argumentative, which is not my intent, I think it's important to provide people with accurate information when they ask about RV solar, because it's an often misunderstood topic. Exagerating the costs, benefits or drawbacks of RV solar only adds to the confusion.
There are articles all over the internet, that have been written by "so called" RV solar experts, that contain distorted and inaccurate information. Depending on what someone's trying to accomplish with solar, it can get expensive, so becoming educated on the facts is important to accomplishing your own goals as well as saving money.
There's certainly no "one size fits all" solution to RV solar, and it's often difficult to use rules of thumb. That's because there are so many variables that will affect how effective solar will be. What works well for one person in one location, may not work well for someone else who's camping in another state - even with the same RV. Where and when someone camps, their average power consumption, their battery capacity and when they use high consumption appliances, will all impact how well solar is going to work for them.
Many RVers rely primarily on solar power to charge their batteries, and a lot of them don't even have a generator. That would be a bit tenuous for us, but if it works for them, great. I've always had the same opinion as Wireman - that solar is more of a supplimental power source for RVing, but the fact is, in our last five boondocking trips, which were each several days long, we've put less than one hour on our generator (total, for all five trips).
Our residential fridge ran 24 hours a day, we ran our microwave, coffee maker, TVs, chargers etc. day after day, night after night, whenever we wanted to, all off our inverter and batteries - batteries that were recharged almost exclusively with solar power. So which power source was supplimental?
You don't need a 200O AH battery-bank or an RV clad in solar panels to accomplish that, and it certainly doesn't have to cost $5000 to $10,000. We do it in a relatively large RV with an 840 AH battery-bank, an MPPT controller and six 160 watt tiltable panels. We've even got room on the roof for more panels, we just don't need them.
Kev