solar

[bobnlyd]

what would i use just to charge my trailer battery during the day for night use...maybe lights for cooking and stereo...nothing much..and is it better to have two 6volt batteries or one 12 volt

[Shadow Catcher]

Solar can work very well It did for us the six days we were off grid this summer. There are two components to this conservation, LED lights computer case fans in place of a Fantastic fan etc. The other is the solar, how much you need is dependent on load, available sun hours shade etc. Battery, there is no advantage to using 6V batteries and what you often see with the 6V is BIG heavy golf cart batteries with LOTS of capacity. We have a 150 amp hour AGM battery and we never got below 78% state of charge in camp sites with deep shade and the down side it weighs 100#.

[parnold]

I have an 80watt panel, and according to my calculations, should work for me with some Fantastic fan usage, and minimal usage of my lights. I never got around to replacing my bulbs with l.e.d.'s . I also use my battery to charge my tablet, and cellphone occasionally. I'll find out in the next two weeks if my calculations were correct.

On my recent trip to Maryland, I had to use the Fantastic fan all night long due to the excessive heat. In the morning, I would start my car, hook up jumper cables to the battery in the trailer, and in half an hour the battery was full, or very near it. I always have jumper cables with me, so if the 80 watt panel isn't enough, I'll still be ok. Someone told me that a car with a 4 cyl engine will use about a pint an hour of gas at idle, so the 40 cents worth of gas was worth it as far as I was concerned.

[EDIT] I did not have my solar panel in Maryland.

[bobnlyd]

shadow catcher...that rig you have is close to what i am designing...did you build that yourself...except i plan on using barn doors in the rear for the galley and use my ez up as cover...

[Shadow Catcher]

The trailer was the 7th and last one built by a start up company that went out of business before they finished ours, we had owned the first one they built and traded it in on this one, fully paid for. I had to threaten legal action (Indiana has some screwy legal stuff that protect their manufacturers) and I picked it up the day before I would have started action. It was not complete and things like electrical were not done correctly so I have had to become very familiar with its innards. That whole story is on here some where but you can look at the album which shows this one under construction and the previous model.