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Old 10-02-2020, 08:30 PM   #15
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We have 1600W of Solar and 840Ah of LiFePO4 batteries and we can run a residential refrigerator, built-in wine cooler, Internet, 2 satellite receivers and TV as well as 3-4 hours of a single rooftop AC unit on our battery bank.

With our solar we can charge the batteries back with 5 hours of sunshine daily.

Cost of system wth me doing 90% of the install and being a pretty good shopper.....~$15K. Now I have a Cadillac system and could probably accomplish much of this for maybe a $2500 less wiz-bang stuff, maybe $5K less if I went with DIY LiFePO4 batteries.....so it CAN be done and you just have to decide whether you want to spend the $$ to do it or just run the generator
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Old 10-02-2020, 08:42 PM   #16
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The generator on our coach is way too noisy to run all night. So, we close all the windows except the ones on each side of our bed. Then I turn on the Fantastic Fan over the stove. The control also has a thermostat along with a selector switch for high/low speeds.
Breeze drawn in by the fan, comes into the bedroom, over us, and the slight noise is out in the kitchen.
Of course this won't work if extremely hot, but things cool down when the sun goes down.
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Old 10-03-2020, 08:26 AM   #17
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Even with a system as paul65k describes, it's all predicated by the sun. One cloudy day, or the spot in the campground is shaded, game over and you have to run the generator to bring the batteries back up. Whatever goes out, must go back in and even with an aggressive charger and lithium batteries the generator would have to run for hours to replenish a depleted large battery bank. Just setting the stage there ain't no free lunch and the system it takes to "time shift" dozens of kWh of energy is complicated and expensive. Some folks like the strategy involved in managing solar and storage and that's fine, but if the expectation is to be just like home where power is always available and effortless, that's not happening in an RV.

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Old 10-03-2020, 10:32 AM   #18
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Much like Paul65 I installed all my own components, but went with off the shelf commercial lithium batteries. With lithium batteries ability to take max charge at all times, have never found a case where I had to start generator to recharge batteries. Even in overcast conditions, solar will put enough charge back into my batteries to last through the next night. Of course, this is with no air conditioner use.
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Old 10-03-2020, 12:37 PM   #19
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From a case of raw amperage (ignoring battery chemistry for a moment) I have 880 total amps in my batteries, and that roughly translates to 10k watts that I can get out - IF they are run to completely dead. (don't do this!)

Now my setup, I have a pretty consistent idle load of about 35 watts - that's what the inverter is showing me, and should be my router and network connection, and a network hard drive. There is also a possible DC load of about another 25 watts. With another 10 watts for "losses" and things that aren't being accurately counted by the Victron gear, that says my bare-minimum is about 5 amps continuous draw. (the coach is in storage right now but I can still see what is happening remotely)

I have a residential fridge in my unit (powered off right now) that uses around 80 watts most of the time - BUT it also has a heating coil in it for the defroster that MUST be using a staggering amount of power - I've yet to catch it on the meter when it is actually heating, but I think it is somewhere around 500 watts! I plan to manually disable that with a switch or timer or something. Point is - when I've been boondocking off of just the solar, the batteries can go from full at sundown to around 50% by morning - With around 4 hours of 200-watt-TV-watching, a laptop computer, and that fridge.

Pirate loads like that heating coil are the things you never expect, but HAVE to find and solve or your batteries will be flat before morning. Your sleeping equipment PROBABLY doesn't use as much power as that fridge, but that's where the stickers on the devices will help you figure out what you need.
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