#solar #solarpower #solarpanels
Going solar is no longer just hype, as campers and those living in RVs will tell you it really makes a difference. But for a beginner the question is, how do you find out how many solar panels you will need? Figuring it out is actually straightforward.
An RV requires at least one 150 watt solar panel to cover basic necessities. A 300 watt solar panel with a 100 amp hour battery bank is the minimum for two people. The more power you consume, the more solar panels are needed. You will also need battery storage, charge controllers and an inverter.
So How do You Calculate RV Power Requirements?
If you have some experience with solar power and been on RVs for a while, making the transition to solar should pose no problems. If you have never used solar for your RV before, this is how you find out the best way to calculate how much power you have to install.
There are two things to keep in mind regardless of the size of your RV:
The power your solar panels store in the battery: solar panels generate energy from the sun, but since the sun is out only for a limited number of hours, you have to store that energy in a battery for use later. A battery bank refers to a series of batteries linked together to store energy.
The amount of power you use, measured in amp hours. The watts and amps in your system determines how much power you have to get. The more amp hours you consume, the higher the watts and amp hour capacity needed.
There are 2 ways to calculate solar power requirements.
1. Run an RV Power Usage Experiment
Take your RV out and use it as you would on a regular day. If you haven't already, set up a battery monitor. In this example we are using lead acid 200 amp hour batteries. Don't turn on the generator.
Keep an eye on the battery indicator and see how much you use up. Do not minimize your use of appliances and electronic devices. Just use them as you would daily. This way we'll know how much solar power you really need. Do not let lead acid batteries drop below 50%. Letting the battery go under 50% will decrease its lifespan and make it unusable in the long run. Even other types of solar batteries should not b drained completely.
Determine how many days it takes for you to drain the battery to the 50% level. If it takes 2 days to drop to 50%, it means you use 50 amp hours daily. Remember you must not let the battery level drop to 50%, so those 200 amps is really 100 amp.
A 100 amp usage over 2 days means 50 amps per day.
Using those steps, you will get an idea of how many solar panels and battery capacity are required. If the battery level drops to 50% in less than a day, get a bigger capacity battery bank. Remember, your solar panels are only as good as the amount of energy that can be stored in the batteries, so a bigger bank means more energy accumulated.
2. Calculate Daily Power Use
Here you manually calculate how much power your appliances and devices consume. This can be useful for some, but it's just a tedious process. You have to record how long you watch TV, how many watts it uses, and repeat for every electronic device and appliance you use.
This method is not only cumbersome but impractical, since we don't watch the same number of hours of TV per day. The same applies to your laptop, hair dryer and so on.
You don't use them the same way daily, so calculating will be difficult and inaccurate. Stick to the first method as it's more precise. This is only useful if you want a ballpark figure and is still in the planning stage.
So How Many Solar Panels Do You Need For an RV?
After you figure out how many amp hours you use, next is how many solar panels should you install?
It depends on how much power the solar panels generate. There are many factors to consider, but let us go over the pertinent points.
Under perfect conditions, a 100 watt solar panel produces 100 watts, but perfect conditions rarely happen. Weather, time of season, cloud cover, sun intensity, battery storage capacity, solar panel quality all are factors.
Assume you use 50 amp hours a day. With the table above you'll see that a 100 watt, 5.43 amp hour solar kit is ideal. Why? If there are six hours of sunlight your solar panel can use, that gives 32.5 amps. If there is more sunlight that's even better.
Now pair the 100 watt solar panel with another 100 watt solar panel and you get 65 amp hours, more than enough for the 50 amp hours you use daily. With 200 watts there is plenty of reserve in case of emergency use. If you figure there is going to be plenty of cloudy days ahead, stock up on energy reserves. This is where that battery capacity comes into play.
This is just an example of how to calculate solar power requirements. You can save power if you buy energy efficient appliances, for instance.
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