![]() My guess is that when I was charging lead-acid batteries using my first solar panel system, I cut solar performance by more than half.Ī good practice would be to run wire with the idea that someday in the future you may want to add more solar panels to your system. Lead-acid batteries also degrade solar panel performance because they resist being charged. Don’t expect a 100-watt panel to produce 500-watt/hours of usable energy each day. Summer will give you about two extra peak exposure hours. If the panel says 100-watt output, you can count on about 70 watts of usable power per hour during the peak exposure hours, which is about five hours per day, even in the winter. Failure to account for true performance and expansionĪlmost always, due to less than ideal orientation, your solar panel needs to be oversized by a factor of about 30%. The effect isn’t quite the disaster that installing panels in the shade is, but they will not perform nearly as well without air circulation behind the panel.īe sure to allow for airflow under and around your solar panel. ![]() If solar panels are installed flat to the roof, their operating temperature will increase, and as this happens the output of the panel will decrease. When they are in the shade, they sometimes can produce only 10% of their potential energy. Solar panels are designed to sit in the direct sun. Depending on how your system is wired, shade on one panel can even kill the energy production of the adjoining panel. It is better to have a poor orientation on the panels than it is to have shade on the panels. Installing panels that are not exposed to full sunĪny little shade kills the energy production of the panel. Once you have enough battery to run 24 hours, you can then determine how many solar panels you need to perform the recharge. A good rule of thumb is to size your battery so that you can operate for 24 hours without recharging. Start designing by figuring out your battery size. Once you know how much electricity you use, then you can start designing your RV solar system. Guessing is not a good substitute for measuring. Here is an entire article on that subject: Battery monitor - the missing critical part. If you are only using voltage to determine usage, you are simply guessing. ![]() Once you have a shunt-based monitor, then you can measure your electricity use. If the battery monitor does not have a shunt, then choose a different product. There are even less expensive shunt-based battery monitors, but I don’t have any experience with them. A slightly less expensive option is the Victron Smart Shunt. My choice is a Victron 712 model that reports discharge to my cell phone. I did this before installing solar on my two different RVs. The best way to tell how much electricity you use from a battery is by measuring consumption using a shunt-based battery monitor. Most people don’t have any idea about how much electricity they use. Be especially careful with this option with lithium batteries they don’t resist the charge and can damage an alternator quickly. Be careful here, small engine alternators are not designed to provide long-duration high amperage battery recharging. Instead of RV solar or a generator, you could use your truck engine and alternator as a generator. This does not argue for a solar panel to recharge your battery in the daytime. If your battery discharges overnight to a point of concern, you need a larger capacity battery or a lower draw from the battery. If you do get a generator, get a quiet one. Then the question becomes, how often do you camp this way? If only once or twice a summer, then a generator might be a better, less expensive answer. When you start spending more than one day in a row camping at locations without electrical hookups, this argues for recharging your batteries with solar panels. If you occasionally spend the night without hookups during a quick stop on a longer journey, I would argue for more or larger batteries, not for solar panels. Your batteries will recharge just as well and probably faster using the power at your destination. If all you do is travel from RV park with hookups to RV park with hookups, you don’t need solar panels to recharge your batteries. Buying RV solar panels you don’t need or won’t useīuying solar you don’t need or won’t use is the most obvious error. Here is my list on how to avoid the most common RV solar mistakes. In fielding these questions, I have determined that many solar installations do not achieve the desired outcome. Unless air conditioning is required where we are camping, our solar panels provide for all our energy needs. The RV solar system is large and obvious on our roof. I get lots of questions about our RV solar and battery system. Here’s How to Avoid the Most Common RV Solar Mistakes
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