Solar results

[brenkco]

I thought I’d share our first boondocking experience trying out our new solar installation. We were curious if we could go without a generator. Quick answer was no.

Our configuration is 800 watts of panels, 400 watts that came with the rig. We added 2-200 watt panels. Our batteries are 2-300ah epoch batteries. We have a 3000 watt inverter.

The main power hogs are the 12v refer and the furnace fan.

Solar only was insufficient. 2 main reasons:

First, the sun is too low in the winter to get the full capacity of the panels. (We’re in Arizona)

Second, we had some cloudy days that limited the input.

After first night, I was down to 25% by morning. Little to no recovery during the day due to cloud cover. I used my neighbors generator to charge up.

Next night I was careful with power consumption and woke up with about 40% batteries. Still very little recovery.

Experienced boondockers parked next to me with more than double the panels still had to run their generators to supplement charging the batteries. They all have propane refers and ventless (no fan) heaters.

Those that had 600ah batteries: with solar, generator charging every 3-4 days. No solar, charging 2-3 days.

Ordered a Westinghouse 4000 dual fuel generator for next time.

Ken

 

[Oregon_Camper]

Yep...winter is horrible for solar. Sun not high enough or up long enough. Running the heater (again...Winter issue) is also a big draw.

Now, come Summer, you will see MUCH better solar production and will most likley have your battery bank topped off by 1-2pm.

One thing you can do now is to put the frig in "sleep" mode when you go to bed. This keeps it in a low power draw for 8 hours. The thought here is the doors (frig & freezer) are close while folks are sleeping, so not a lot of cooling is needed.

For more info...we have 2000 watts of solar and 870 amp hours of lithium batteries. We have been around the greater Phoenix area for about 3 weeks. We are able to go about 4 days without running our small Yamaha generator. I don't try to limit our power consumption. Starlink Mini runs (changed to 12v only) from 6am to midnight, 12v frig runs all the time (no sleep mode) and heater used as needed. Same type of camping in Summer and I never had to use generator and I even run the AC in bedroom before bed when needed.