Solar power for your RV, save fuel and eliminate dead batteries.

Whether your RV is at the campground or in storage, solar can keep your batteries charged and ready to go. This means less fuel, less noise, less hassle and more time to enjoy your RV.

Many people ask, what can I run off solar? Can I run the microwave and air conditioner? To answer we need to realize that we do not run anything off solar, directly. We run our RV's from the battery bank and use solar to recharge the batteries. This means we need to size the batteries together with the solar system in view of the electrical requirements.

If you already have in mind the system size you want you can skip directly to our RV_kits page. Or if you would like us to size / recommend a system (we would enjoy working with you to provide a solution), please click over to our rv questionnaire page to get started or call us at 800-868-4907.

So what can we run off our batteries? A typical 12 volt Group 24 RV battery will have an Amp Hour rating around 100. This means we could theoretically draw 100 amps  from the battery and then it would be completely dead. However, is it important to note that for good battery life we try to never draw more than 50% of it's rated capacity. In some applications 80% is better, but for RVs 50% is our goal. Therefore if we have a single 12 volt Group 24 battery we now have a capacity of 50 amp hours. What will this do for us? To answer we need to know two primary things about the device we want to power, its voltage and  wattage. With this information we can calculate the amperage draw. VOLTS x AMPS = WATTAGE, or WATTAGE / VOLTS = AMPS. As an example let's use a "typical" RV furnace fan. If it draws 85 WATTS and runs off of 12 VOLTS, it is using 7 Amps while in use. If we divide 7 into 50 (what our battery has to give) we can run the furnace for 7 hours (7amps x 7 hours = 49 amp hours) before we need to recharge the batteries.

If we are using 120 volt devices such as coffee makers or TV's it is the same idea just a little more math.
   EXAMPLE: Coffee maker: 1200 watts @ 120 volts = 10 amps.
But we need to convert this to 12 volt to match our batteries, 10 Amps x 10 (120 volts / 12 volts = 10) means our coffee maker is pulling 100 Amps from our batteries. AND when we run this thru an inverter it consumes about 10% for the conversion process. So 100 Amps + 10% = 110 Amps. Thankfully a coffee maker can be ran for 15 minutes or so using a total of 27.5 Amp Hours from our battery bank (110 / .25 hours = 27.5 Amp Hours).

This is fairly straight forward but time consuming to figure accurately as we need to add up ALL the items running from the batteries. These could include: propane alarm, furnace, water pump, lights, refrigerator controls, coffee makers, TV's, ETC.

So getting back to our question about running the A/C from solar. According to the math if the A/C uses 20 amps at 120 volts or 2400 watts of power we would need 200 Amps of battery capacity, 4 Group 24 batts, to run the A/C for ONE hour. That is just not practical, so we recommend a generator for A/C . We wish that was not the case, but for high demand items they are usually the best way to go. Many people run a hybrid system in their RV. Solar for all the smaller loads (water pump, lights, TV, furnace) and a generator to care for the large power users (A/C). This allows for full use of the RV and we can still enjoy the peace and quiet of the great outdoors.

 Please keep in mind all the wattage numbers used in the examples are "typical" and you should ALWAYS check your appliances for how they are rated.  

This may seem to be a lot to take in, and we know this. That is why we are happy to do the math for you and recommend a system to power your RV. If you would like us to do that please call us at 800-868-4907 or use our RV Questionnaire page to submit a sizing request.

Note: we will be adding sample system sizings in the near future to provide examples of what you can expect to run from your solar power system.