Solar Panels, Is It Worth Having Them Installed?

[Babyell]

Hi we are new to all this so please excuse my maybe obvious questions!

We have just bought our first MH and don't want to have to rely on camp sites for power. We have the 2 gas tanks etc but we were wondering if it is worth getting solar panels fitted? we have a button for them on our control panel thingy to show power available. how easy and cost effective are they to install? thanks in advance

 

[funflair]

You can run anything you like, you just have to do the maths.. which I'm no good at.. the more you run the more batteries you need and the more batteries you have the more you need in order to keep them charged.. if you search around the maths is on here and you just need some numbers from the label on the device.. and a calculator

Anybody feeling brave could try reading this.

http://www.motorhomefun.co.uk/forum/threads/power.106286/

Otherwise just divide the watts you are using by the voltage that is providing the power, so if you are running. 1200 watt hair dryer from the inverter the voltage is coming from your batteries so 1200/12 is 100 so 100 amps from you batteries, running like this for 6 minutes would take 10 ah from the batteries so at least a couple of hours to put it back in.
The other way to guesstimate the amps your battery would have to provide running an appliance through the inverter would be to find the amps rating of the appliance and multiply it by 20 and this is roughly the amp draw at 12 volts

Inverters are not 100% efficient so some liberties have been taken with these examples so if you want to be safe use 25 instead of 20 in the example above.

Martin

 

[Terry and Jan]

Contact Autoadditions ltd Derby, speak to Tyronne, great guy he is mobile around the country, came to a site and met us to fit our snipe, then this year came down to Cornwall and fitted our solar panel. Very reasonable.

 

[Terran]

Tyrone fitted our Snipe too, did it at my work premises in a few hours. Only made him two cups of coffee, really good guy, recommended

 

[mjltigger]

I'm taking back what I said about us not needing solar. We've just registered for next year's Glastonbury tickets and I'm pretty sure for 5 days parked up I will need more power than I have..

It's just we've never done 5days parked up before..

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[ianandkath]

run the genny for a few hours,,
charges the batteries, and annoys the hell out of the nieghbours

 

[carolyn]

Delighted with our solar panel as fitted by Vanbitz, meant we could spend the whole week at the Dorset rally without worrying.