Ok Here's the deal ... I'm taking my KZ Sportsman Classic 14Rb and redoing everything electrical in it from the ground up.

Hi Steve..

Cherie,

We estimate that on a good day, our 200 watts of solar panels can generate about 50 amp hours per day.   Hard to give an estimate of how much of that goes into the batteries vs is used immediately.  All depends on what we're doing :)

We have 260 watts of solar panels and we can generate about 60 amp hours on a good day.

Sounds like we are right in line with Cherie and Chris

 

jenn

I am most interested in this.  Do you all heat water and run refrigerators off this power or do you run that on propane?  I was thinking that the less propane I use the better. 

Also, will putting on solar void any my trailer warranties?  I just bought this darn thing. :)

I've heard propane consumption by the fridge isn't that bad. Regardless the rig I'm buying comes with a 6 gal tank which I'm converting to a dual tank setup. I've been advised that it's best to plan your showers so you can turn on the water heater before you need it and kill it as soon as you're done. You're on the right track regarding using as little propane as possible. Having said that, I have seen lots of places on the road where you can get your tanks refilled or replaced pretty easily. It really depends where you are in the country.

You'd need a heck of a lot of solar to be able to run fridge and hot water off them too.  It's done of course in solar homes with larger arrays..  and I know of someone designing their RV system to do this with a bunch of solar on their roof. 

"I've heard propane consumption by the fridge isn't that bad."

I have some experience with how long our refrigerator can run on propane.  It's a Norcold 4-door job (1200 LRIM) - 2 doors for one big compartment in the refrigerator, 2 separate freezer compartments.  We have an onboard 38-gallon propane tank (30 usable gallons) on a 40-foot motorhome.

In South Texas in mid-March through mid-May, the propane will last about 2 months.  That's almost all refrigerator use--maybe 15 minutes a week of one propane stovetop burner use, and no more than 2 or 3 tanks of hot water total.  This has been the approximate result three different times now, so I'm pretty confident in it.

Maybe you can adjust the numbers to get an idea of what your refrigerator would use.

It was interesting to see how many amp hours people are getting.  We have 1050 Watts of flat-mounted panels and average 250-300 amp hours, which is right in line with what others are reporting. 

However, as Cherie and Chris pointed out, you don't know from those figures how much went into the batteries themselves because once they're full, the system doesn't "accept" as much electricity as the panels might be capable of producing.  I love it when the batteries are in absorb or float mode because I'm getting guilt-free power.

We started out with 700 Watts, but it was barely keeping up with our demands (and not keeping up with my desire to recharge the batteries fully every day).  So a year later we added two more panels (we had mapped the roof out for them, just in case--very smart) and between conservation measures during boondocking that have become routine after all this time and the increased capacity, we generally float the batteries by noon or early afternoon now.

If I remember, I'll run the water heater on the inverter once the batteries are full, to "use" the excess electricity the panels are producing.  The resident electrical engineer hooked up a diode that pulses it on and off depending on the voltage of the batteries.

Doing that does pad the stats, though, since we get to "use" more of what the panels are capable of producing than if they were solely recharging and maintaining the batteries.  We do it with computers and the TV all the time, but the water heater is a much more significant stat padder.

rcornmesser wrote: Do you all heat water and run refrigerators off this power or do you run that on propane?  I was thinking that the less propane I use the better.  Also, will putting on solar void any my trailer warranties?  I just bought this darn thing. :)

We try to save all our juice for our laptops and Internet. Our fridge, stove and water heater all run on propane when we boondock.

Last winter we boondocked exclusively for two months. We went through one 7.5 gal each month. Sucked it down pretty fast but we had juice to get our work done and that's all that mattered.

Will it void any warranties? Not sure. We have an X-Tra Ride Warranty (extended) that we purchased separately and we've never had a problem with the few claims we've filed, two of which were for our Motosat. I think it really depends on who your coverage is with, some companies are crap.