so how much solar do you really need if you want to add a solar system to your RV we're going to
talk about that in this video we just got back from a four day exclusively unplugged event and
used our solar system to the max so we're going to talk about how much you really need if solar
something on your radar you're going to definitely want to stay tuned so if you are new here to the
channel my name is Charity my husband Ben our two kids our dog our cats we've been traveling
the US in this motorhome for five years now and we have learned a ton along the way so the
purpose of this channel is to share it with you in the RV community and in the up and coming RV
Community all of our tips our tricks things that we've learned on the road are fails some hacks
some great places to visit and some of the best food that we've found along the way so if that's
something you're interested in you're definitely going to want to hit that subscribe button so that
you can be notified each time that we release a new video so let's talk real fast about how
a solar system in an RV V works and for that we're going to actually go back in time to the location
where we were boondocking in Texas to tell you all about it basically you have solar panels that are
on your roof or if you have portable foldable solar panels they're capturing the energy from
the Sun and then they feed through a device called a charge controller that converts that
energy from the Sun into an electrical charge to be stored in your batteries now as you're running
things in your RV you're not truly running off the solar you're running on this energy that's
now stored inside of your battery bank and so you're draining down that battery bank but then
you have the sun coming in that's charging that battery bank so that's kind of how the whole
Cycle Works if you don't have a lot of sun if you have a lot of periods of rain or clouds or things
like that it is going to be a little bit more of a struggle to keep a fuller charge on those
batteries because you just don't have that same energy coming in from the side so let's talk for
just a minute about how much solar that we have on our RV we actually ended up putting two different
sets of solar panels on the roof of our RV so in the front of the RV we have panels that equal 800
watts of solar and in the rear of the RV we have three panels that total 1440 watts of solar which
gives us a grand total of the roof solar of 2240 Watts that are on the roof now we actually have
a way that we can add a few more watts that we're going to tell you about just a little bit later in
the video the other thing that we have is we have six 100 amp hour Battleborn batteries that are
part of our system and so if you remember just a few minutes ago we talked about the batteries and
why the batteries are such an important part of a solar system how many watts do you really need how
many batteries all all of that well we're going to get to that in just a few minutes as well as kind
of give you a price range of what you might expect to pay to add a solar system into your RV so let's
talk a little bit about a few things that we have learned over the last four days of exclusively
boondocking here in Athens Texas so we have a lot of electrical equipment that we usually do carry
with us for producing content and for producing videos one of those devices is essentially a
storage device to be able to store a lot of video files called a Nas and we realize that thing
takes a lot more power than what we were kind of thinking it would probably take and so to conserve
power we've realized with a device like that or if you have another Power hungry device that we don't
plug it in or use it unless we're actually needing to use it so the other thing that we learned is we
have a newer modem called the pup link which we'll be talking about in a future video so so make sure
you subscribe for that but that also is taking a lot of power so we're going to be looking at doing
some sort of conversion on that over to DC which basically is going to just make it more efficient
in the power draw so one of the things that we've had to make sure that we're paying attention to
is you don't want to drain your batteries all the way down to zero now technically with lithium you
can do that but it's not the best idea to do that so the lowest that we got why we've been here was
about 12 and that was we started the night off at about 50 percent charge we ran our rear bedroom AC
through the night of course our fridge is running on 12 volt there's other things that are running
drawing power off of the batteries and it took us down to pretty minimal in the morning so we
did start up the generator in the morning so just give it a boost on the charge before that
we started to get some sun to get those charged up since we learned that if you have a string of
rainy days cloudy days it doesn't matter how much solar you have how many batteries you have no sun
equals no power so in those particular instances you absolutely need some sort of Alternate Source
to charge up your batteries whether that be a gas or diesel power generator or whether that be some
sort of electrical hookup because those cloudy days you're just not going to get any way to
recharge these batteries now there is one thing that has stayed the same for us whether we're
boondocking in the middle of nowhere or in an RV resort with all the hookups and amenities and that
is we are always able to get a restful night's sleep with our mattress from rvmattress.com by
Brooklyn Bedding we went with the Aurora Lux hybrid mattress and it's been great having a
mattress that feels like a real bed and not like an RV bed the process to have it shipped to us and
then get it in the RV was super simple their mattresses come rolled up in a box wrapped in
plastic so when our mattress arrived we hoisted it in the RV unwrap the plastic and it poofed right
up but what about when you're not on the road or if you're a part-time rver one thing we realized
is when we were in our RV we were sleeping much better than when we were at our glamper Hideaway
which is like a home-based slash vacation rental for us so we went through brooklynbetting.com
which is an RV mattress parent company to get Brooklyn Bedding mattresses for our home base
and upgraded all of our mattresses to Brooklyn Bedding so we're getting a restful night's sleep
but also when we have guests we know they're getting a restful night's sleep as well they
have a factory in Arizona they ship for free and come with a 10-year warranty so we are set for a
very long time one of the things we really want to do is be a resource for the RV community and
so we've partnered with rvmatros.com for 25 off for our viewers plus there's going to be a pretty
big Memorial Day sale later this month so be sure to click the link below or go to rvmattress.com
forward slash grateful to get the Memorial Day sale detail so today is the first day that it's
really been like 100 that full sun and we have learned with this new solar setup just how much
cloudy days affect us so pretty much last night we had to shut off our AC because we didn't have
enough battery to sustain us through the night we only started at about 60 Battery and that was
after using the generator so we are learning what this is like when you've got solar when
you're boondocking really what you need to get you through the night and so for us that looks
like we pretty much need to start at 100 before we go to bed and if we do that we'll be fine uh
to use our ACS and stuff like that through the night so using the generator and some sun to
get 100 charged up this morning and then kind of the goal and the thought process is is that if we
get to 100 percent and then use the sun to just keep us at 100 while we're running the ACs and
everything else like that today then we should be good as the day progresses so we will see if
that works so probably one of the best things that we have been enjoying about this system
now that we're actually out here really putting it to the task is that as we're traveling and
on these travel days we used to have to power our rooftop ACS through the generator so now
we can actually use our battery Bank to run the rooftop ACS as we're going down down the road and
as we're going down the road we've got the solar coming in that's charging up that battery bank but
also there's some charge that's coming from the alternator as well going into that battery bank
so this is actually a fuel savings for us when it comes to being able to keep those rooftop ACS
going as we're traveling without having to use the generator at all so now one upgrade that we
did make right before we went on this trip and I am so thankful that we did was we did go ahead and
replace the Xantrex inverter that we had with this one from Victron now a couple of reasons that we
did that our Xantrex inverter was next to brand new it was only a year old there was no problems
with the inverter itself the only thing is it was what was called a single leg versus a dual
leg inverter and pretty much what that meant was that if we wanted to then plug into Shore power
well we had to come back to the this area flip a switch over so that the inverter knew where the
power was coming from in the Victron being a dual leg inverter is a little bit more of kind of a set
it and forget it type of inverter but the other reason was because all of our other components
that we have as far as our charge controllers our Cerbo everything is Victron components now
they're all talking to each other we can see in one place through the VRM software in the app
what's going on with the whole entire system so it just gives us some peace of mind and also if
something were to happen it gives us an easier way to troubleshoot where any problems might
lie by having all of the same components that can all talk to each other now some people when they
do their solar setups will actually install two inverters and that is because this inverter is a
3000 watt inverter which basically means that we can run up to 3000 watts of appliances in the RV
at a time and this will handle that capacity okay so if we're running both of our rooftop
ACS then we kind of need to be mindful of what other components that maybe we're running at
the same time to make sure we don't overload the wattage here so if we've got both AC's going and
I want to dry my hair probably going to need to shut off one of those AC's to run my hair dryer
and then be able to turn that back on a lot of people run a double inverter setup so that they
don't have to think about that power usage as much we've just gone with the single inverter
and we just monitor that power usage in our app when we're off grid so how much solar do you
really need well one thing to keep in mind is you want to put as much as you can on the roof but an
alternate source to add some more wattage when it comes to the solar panels is by getting foldable
panels or Deployable solar panels we have an extra 400 watts with our foldable panels and the reason
that we did that is because because we don't always know if where we're going to be parked
in our RV if we're off grid is going to be full sun or not and so what if our solar panels are
in a shaded area for part of the day well we're not getting the full solar that we could so we've
chosen to get some deployable or foldable solar panels so we can move those around to where they
need to be to be able to kind of follow the path of the sun throughout the day so we're getting the
max solar that we can get so how much solar you really need well it's kind of a little bit of a
loaded question and the best way to look at that is to actually look at how much power that you
see yourself using or wanting to use on a daily basis when you're camping off grid so one thing
that go power did to help us determine how much we really needed is they actually sent us over a
spreadsheet where we listed out everything that we wanted to be using on a daily basis the actual amp
hours that we needed to run those things and then kind of formulated that backwards so that answer
is really going to depend upon you your situation your family size your camping style all of those
things but basically sit down think about what is it that you want to do and then add all of those
numbers up and that's going to start to give you an idea of how big does your battery Bank need to
be and then how many watts of solar are you going to need to charge those batteries so one of the
big questions that we got on our original video we did when we had this install done is how much
does it cost well costs can really vary across the board depending upon how many batteries that you
put in how many charge controllers that you're using panels all of those things so it's a huge
range of cost and really the sky's the limit because you can build these systems out pretty
dang big but expect probably about two thousand dollars on the very low low end for something
very basic and it just goes up from there so what questions do you have about solar you'll have to
drop those in the comments for us as well as make sure to check out the links in the description
for more resources when it comes to solar and our particular solar setup if we don't see you
out on the road or around the campground we'll definitely see you in the next video