Thinking I need some solar!

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Bill and Debbie

Well-known member
Joined
Jun 7, 2014
Posts
374
Location
Poulsbo, WA
We don't do a lot of boon docking but recently had an experience that changes how I view being "off the grid"' We spent a total of 7 days without benefit of hookups. 5 of them were on the Rincon Parkway in Ventura, CA I had a little over a 1/2 tank of fuel but after 4 days I guess I had drawn the fuel down to 1/4 tank and the generator would not run. Had to stow everything away and drive off to get some fuel and return. We were running the genset about 3-4 hours a day. We have a residential fridge and did watch a little TV.

Would really like recommendations as to how much solar I might need to either eliminate the genset all together or drastically reduce its run time. I'm thinking a couple of roof mounted panels. Any thoughts would be appreciated.

Thanks
 
I have solar on both my RV and my boat - LOVE IT! I would recommend you put as much on top as you can fit/afford. Some people will tell you not to get solid residential style panels because they can't handle the vehicle - nonsense. They are the most efficient panels you can get. As I said, I have them on my boat and RV and have not had a single problem with any of them. By far the most important part of the system is the controller. Don't go cheap - buy an MPPT controller. You will be glad you did.

One caveat on "how much" - if you have a very small battery bank (like 2 golf cart batteries or something), don't go overboard. It will be a waste of money to put 1500 watts on that small of a battery bank.

Good luck!
 
Four 225 watt panels and four 200 amp hour batteries let us be independent of outside power. But, are you willing to spend $2500 for "not a lot of boondocking?" You can buy a lot of fuel for that kind of money.
 
I'll insert my standard answer to anyone needing a lesson on solar:

http://www.jackdanmayer.com/rv_electrical_and_solar.htm

https://handybobsolar.wordpress.com/
 
I'll give you my personal experience with RV solar. We rely primarily on solar power while boondocking - and most of our camping is boondocking. Our coach came with a 22 CF res-fridge, a 2800 watt inverter, three entertainment centers and all the lights have been converted to LEDs. It's a relatively high consumption RV. It also came with six AGM house-batteries. Most of our boondocking is in the California and Arizona deserts, so there's usually a lot of sun. (Makes a big difference)

Before I installed solar, we were having to run our 10K generator nearly four hours a day to keep the batteries charged. I grew tired of that fast, so I installed 960 watts of flat-mounted solar panels. On a sunny day, our batteries were fully charged by about 12:00 to 12:30. The panels would keep the batteries charged until about 3:30, at which time our consumption (primarily the fridge and inverter) would start to draw the batteries down. I had also installed a Trimetric RV 2030 battery monitor so I could see the discharge rates.

In the morning, our battery power was regularly down to about 60%, which I didn't like. Routinely drawing batteries down that far can shorten their lives, and those are pricey batteries. I installed two more identical house-batteries, for a total of 840 AH, and that did the trick. Now they're usually at about 75 to 80% in the morning, which is plenty of power to run our 12 cup coffee maker and nuke something in the microwave.

The bottom line is, as long as there's adequate sunlight, we don't have to run our generator at all - unless we want air conditioning. Solar is definitely a balancing act between power generated, power used and the ability to store it. Another thing I did that really helped was to make our panels tiltable. Tilting them toward the sun in the winter months has incresed their output by about 40%. That translates to faster charging, as well as longer charging.

Kev
 
Solar discussions can and will go on forever it seems. The more/better equipment youinstall on your rig probably depends on the amount of dough you want to spend. To me its like a boat or truck engine. I believe in having plenty of power with me in case I ever need it. You never know what circumstances await you, especially boondocking. I just added my 5th AGM battery along with 4 100 watt panels on the roof. Can't wait to see how this performs. Nothing better than being out in the quiet still air of my campsite!!!!
 
MHO there is no sense going solar to replace a power hungry RV or RVer's. You must do without conveniences to truly reap the cost benefits. It's like a life style choice. My 300watt 350 amp hour 1200w inverter system, self installed was $1300.  Not your high end big name equipment ether. I'm happy to get 10 hours of 5 amp/120v usage
 
I'm afraid you lost me on that one Wireman. Are you saying that a 300 watt solar setup that meets the power requirements of one RV/RVer is acceptable, but larger systems for larger RVs aren't, or are you saying that RVers should do without some amenities while boondocking?

Kev
 
One of the benefits of solar, even though you might not have enough to keep from running the generator, is that a good solar controller will have a max voltage adjustment to allow you to fully charge your batteries whereas there are converter/chargers that dont put out enough voltage to fully charge the batteries.  For instance, I have a Progressive Dynamics PD9260 charger/converter to charge my batteries when running the generator or shore power, but the max charge voltage  is only 14.4 volts which is not enough to fully charge most wet cell deep cycle batteries as Trojan T-105s in series to make 12 volts require 14.8 volts to get fully charged, and some Interstate 6 volts in series to make 12 volts require 15.3 volts to get fully charged.
 
good timing, I just happened to have recently read an interesting and well written (I think) blog post on the subject...
https://www.thefitrv.com/rv-tips/how-much-solar-do-i-need-on-my-rv/
 
Kevin Means said:
I'm afraid you lost me on that one Wireman. Are you saying that a 300 watt solar setup that meets the power requirements of one RV/RVer is acceptable, but larger systems for larger RVs aren't, or are you saying that RVers should do without some amenities while boondocking?

Kev
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.
 
blw2 said:
good timing, I just happened to have recently read an interesting and well written (I think) blog post on the subject...
https://www.thefitrv.com/rv-tips/how-much-solar-do-i-need-on-my-rv/

Informative article. Wonder if there are businesses specializing in rv solar setups. Would sure like to pull into one on the West Coast and have a pro make recommendations. Will have to do a google search. Thanks for the responses.
 
Bill and Debbie said:
blw2 said:
good timing, I just happened to have recently read an interesting and well written (I think) blog post on the subject...
https://www.thefitrv.com/rv-tips/how-much-solar-do-i-need-on-my-rv/

Informative article. Wonder if there are businesses specializing in rv solar setups. Would sure like to pull into one on the West Coast and have a pro make recommendations. Will have to do a google search. Thanks for the responses.

Just because a place may list themselves as professional solar installers, doesnt necessarily mean that they will sell and install an optimized system for you.

The more you know about solar and what you need, will go along way in getting a good system at a fair price.
 
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
 
Kevin Means said:
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).

I think the problem is the residential refrigerator--those are not terrible compatible with boondocking.  It can be done, but it's not ideal.

We have a 40-foot motorhome with 1,050 watts of flat-mounted solar and six golf-cart batteries (690 amp hours, I think).  With the refrigerator on propane, we can go indefinitely on solar alone at this time of the year.  We just spent April and part of May boondocking.  We did three stints of two weeks each without running the generator (they kick you out for two days after two weeks, or we would have just stayed there the whole time and even then, we wouldn't have needed the generator).

Last winter, we did some boondocking in Phoenix and it was a little dicier on solar only, with our refrigerator on propane.

I've done some math and concluded that I wouldn't be comfortable trying to use a residential refrigerator on our amount of solar--it would have to be pretty ideal conditions, and you can't rely on that.

Not to dissuade anyone from adding solar--the only thing I hate more than listening to my generator is listening to someone else's.  But people with residential refrigerators need to understand that it's a whole different ball game from people putting solar on RVs with propane refrigerators.


 
I agree. The typical factory installed residential fridge setup isn't well suited for boondocking - unless, of course, you enjoy listening to genset song. I haven't seen a factory installed setup yet that was capable of running the inverter and fridge for more than a day - some can't even do that.

Our last motorhome had an LP fridge, no inverter and a single 100 watt panel. As long as it was sunny, the only time we had to run the genset was when we wanted to run the microwave, coffee maker or air conditioner. Those LP fridges are well suited for boondocking.

However, by installing adequate solar and 30% more battery capacity, we were able to overcome the draw of our current motorhome's res fridge and inverter - as well as everything else in the coach. Now we have a large res fridge (which we love) and since the microwave and coffee maker run off the inverter, the only time we need to run the genset is if we want air conditioning, which isn't needed much in the winter months.

Yes, it cost some dough to achieve that capability, but we boondock quite a bit, and we don't like listening to our generator droning away, so it made sense to us. Res fridges do cause some power challenges when boondocking, but they can be overcome with some $$ and creativity.

Kev
 
Kevin Means said:
Yes, it cost some dough to achieve that capability, but we boondock quite a bit, and we don't like listening to our generator droning away, so it made sense to us. Res fridges do cause some power challenges when boondocking, but they can be overcome with some $$ and creativity.

If you want to talk about dough, think about what we paid for our solar panels in 2005!  For several years, our solar panels were the only appreciating asset we owned.

I know people love their residential refrigerators, but I kind of resent them.  With solar being so cheap these days, it would be possible for lots more people to have it--maybe only enough to do like you used to and have to use the generator to run the microwave, but that's a lot better than using them for charging batteries.

But the goal line got moved with the popularity of residential refrigerators, and at just the point when we might have been moving away from generators somewhat, we're getting in even thicker because of the increased generator run time to support residential refrigerators, or the huge solar systems that people who aren't serious boondockers won't even consider.

So just when we might have seen an increase in solar and a decrease in generators, we might still be seeing an increase in solar but it's not necessarily bringing down generator use.




 
Trivet said:
If you want to talk about dough, think about what we paid for our solar panels in 2005!  For several years, our solar panels were the only appreciating asset we owned.

I know people love their residential refrigerators, but I kind of resent them.
LOL!  Ain't that the truth! :D Solar has definitely come down in cost since then, and we were lucky to have been on the cheaper end of the spectrum.

I was kind of neither here nor there when it came to res fridges, but now that we've had one... OMG. And everyone I know of who has made the transition, feels the same way. Faster cooling, no flames, no fire hazard recalls, no leveling issues, larger storage... But you definitely have to deal with the power issue if you're a boondocker.

Kev
 
Hello, I haven't been on here in quite a while. We just purchased a new 2017 Sundance 22 ft travel trailer. We are exploring the solar options. Has anyone sucessfully ran their A/C unit on an inverter with solar panels and batteries?  My friend is building his own teardrop trailer and he put a small residential a/c unit in it. He runs it off of a 5,000 watt inverter and a single deep cycle battery.  He keeps telling me that I should be able to run my whole trailer including the a/c on about a 5 - 7000 watt inverter with some solar panels to recharge the batteries. I currently have 2ea 12 volt deep cycle batteries on my new trailer and no solar. The last time we went boondocking we ran a generator 3200 watt with 4000 peak and it ran the ac just fine. However, I am not the guy who wants to run it all the time. In fact when I finally turned it off I could hear someone cheering from another campsite along the river that we had finally shut it off.  I would really like to know more about the solar option. I would be willing to spend up to 800 or 1000 bucks if I thought it would actually work but I don't know enough about it to make the jump just yet. I would really want it to be able to run the A/C as well as my dish network and 32" tv.  Can anyone tell me if this is even possible?    I know that my friends little trailer gets cool but it is only a few square feet since it is a teardrop trailer. It is easy for him to tell me I can do it but he can't even stand up or go to the bathroom in his trailer.  I just want help to know if it is actually possible.  Thanks, Mike  (lions6)
 
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