Quote:
I have a 74 amp hour battery, lasts easily over any 3 day week-end without recharging. That would mean that 240 amp hours should last me about 2 weeks without recharging.
That would mean I'd never have to worry about running out of battery.
I've been thinking about going to a group 27 battery with over a 100 Amp hours. Still wouldn't require recharging, but just in case I might add a small solar panel.
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We have a single medium-sized, 50w
solar panel on our trailer charging our 100Ah spiral gel cell, and it easily generates 2.3 amps on a cloudy spring day . . . probably much more on a sunny summer day. What does that 14Ah buy us? Enough power to run our LED
lighting until the sun burns out, run our
furnace 3 hours a day (which is about right for a cold day), our water pump (which is high demand, but only runs a very few minutes each day), and still have power for charging two laptops once a day and run our Radio/TV for an hour or so. On hot summer days we'd also run our Fantastic Fan, but on hot summer days we'd also get more hours of sunlight and resulting charge, making that a wash. If we watch more TV or charge our laptops more than once a day we start dipping into our battery "reserve" power, but that reserve should easily last several days all by itself and could be replenished by running our tow vehicle if push came to shove.
The downside of our setup is the
solar and
LED lights alone probably cost as much or slightly more than a 1000w Honda generator, but the
solar panels are mounted on the roof in such a way that they're nearly invisible and very difficult to remove (steal) and they make no noise and require no gasoline that has to be purchased and stored safely.