Just a quick silly question,
Would a 50watt solar panel be sufficient to keep my 12v battery topped up, or would you go bigger to a 75 or 85 watt or bigger.
Don't know much about solars but I would just like it so it can keep my battery charged up while we are camping for a week or so,
It is just 2 of us and we don't use lights and power much.
2008 Jeep Grand Cherokee with 3.0L diesel.
2005 Chevy Silverado 1500 4x4
2010 195wbs Shadow cruiser travel trailer.
Well that would be about 4 amps of 12v current charging the battery. I suppose if your light on the battery usage it would work just fine. I am not sure how it would work out on a cloudy or shady parking spot though..
If you say what batteries you have and how long you last now and how you recharge when off grid (what gen, what charger or converter, it is possible to figure out how much solar it would take to get through the week.
Either by solar itself, or as an assist to reduce gen time, or how many more days you can go between gen times compared with now.
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Short answer: It would be a waste of money. 50 watt of solar is just a tad bigger than a trickle charge.
A small generator or 200 watts of solar should meet your needs.
hershey - albuquerque, nm Someday Finally Got Here
My wife does all the driving - I just get to hold the steering wheel.
Superman was an illegal alien.
Expedition - Suzuki Grand Viagra
At that rate you might only need a second battery and get 8 days.
Some solar would help too if you want to $pend some money. IMO you could do well enough with what we have--a single 130w panel and a simple controller. Now the shopping problem:
Princess Auto and Can Tire want vast sums for the same thing you can get at any real solar dealer in Canada for half that. And if you go to the States you can get it for half that again. But shipping costs kill you on panels, so you have to include that in all comparisons.
This kit here isn't too bad a deal for here without shipping, but in the States would be half that in price if you can pick it up yourself.
They sell the 30amp controller in the kit separately for 85 and the panel is 350 so 500 isn't too bad for the kit. Similar panel is 500 so 350 is good for here. Princess Auto was asking 1,000 for that size panel !!!
I have something called a E-Meter that carefully measures the amperage going in and out of the battery bank. My RV uses about 35 amp hours per day to run the refrigerator, propane and CO detectors. The 40 watt panel will help recharge the battery each day, I have a pair of 45 watt panels, and bought a 75 watt panel in 1997 when I started using this RV. Then bought a pair of 120 watt panels to help make more power to run a Digital Direct TV system. I can watch hours of TV daily!
So the 40 watt panel will make about 10 - 12 amp hours per day. The 120 watt will make 35 - 40 AH per day, and will at least keep ahead of what the basic load inside the RV is, but the battery will still go dead towards the end of a week, if you keep using things like lights, and furnace, because you will be taking out 45 - 60 AH daily, while only putting back 35 AH or so.
You can buy a 200 watt panel for not much more than $250 today!
Check the panels, you will need a controller that can handle 30+ volt input for most of the panels, yes they make them with 30 - 60 volt input and 12 volt output.
You can write back with solar panel mounting questions, or click on my name, under it you can click on "View Posts" and use solar as a keyword search to find several recent posts that I made regarding solar panels, mounts, sealing the roof, ect.
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