Solar Panels, Invertors etc - our first experience

[Richie Boy]

Hello to all.
We have just bought a new motorhome that has a solar panel fitted to it as standard. Am I right in assuming that this will only charge the onboard leisure battery and not allow us to run 240v appliances?

If this is the case, how simple is it to fit an invertor to the van, so we can use the 240v stuff, which in reality will only be a coffee machine, a laptop and a TV (for the times where 240v hook up isn't available??)

Thanks for your help in advance

 

[funflair]

Yes you are right, solar will simply look after the 12v side, if you want to run 240v without hook up you need an inverter 2kw pure sine in my opinion, you do need decent batteries to run it though and you need to be sensible with the usage.

Martin

 

[Compactliner]

agree with Martin above and would also add that you'll need a decent solar array to replenish those batteries....

OR......

you could get/run the TV from 12v...
use gas to boil the kettle for a lovely cup of instant coffee
buy a cheap tablet for browsing the net which charges from a 12v socket/usb...

 

[autorouter]

You need to look at the devices you want to power, and find out the wattage. All those on your list, except the coffee machine, will be about 100W or less. The coffee machine will probably be about 1000 to 1200 watts.

Low wattage devices are best powered by a car adapter, which runs from cigarette-lighter-style sockets. USB adapters are easy to find, and most laptops can be run from a 'universal' car adapter. In the worst case, if no car adapter is available, a small 150W inverter can be plugged into most cig sockets without blowing the fuse.

Higher wattage devices need a larger inverter, and that needs enough batteries to power it and some method of filling up the batteries when you have discharged them. Most motorhomes use gas for heating, including kettle, cooking, water heater and space heating. You need a seriously large electrical system to run them off an inverter from solar/battery energy.

I'm not saying it can't be done, just that it needs thinking about, it's not simply plug-in-and-go.

 

[Richard n Ann]

Hello to all.
We have just bought a new motorhome that has a solar panel fitted to it as standard. Am I right in assuming that this will only charge the onboard leisure battery and not allow us to run 240v appliances?

If this is the case, how simple is it to fit an invertor to the van, so we can use the 240v stuff, which in reality will only be a coffee machine, a laptop and a TV (for the times where 240v hook up isn't available??)

Thanks for your help in advance

To put a coffee machine into perspective, the LED lighting in your van will use about 1 amp from the leisure battery . A 1kw coffee machine will use 83 amps!

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[Richie Boy]

Thank you to everyone for your help

 

[Nixdorfer]

Ditto as others have said. I'd start by checking how many and what amp hour your leisure battery setup is.

That will give an indication of what you can go upto. For example a 2000w inverter on a single 80ah battery will be dead in no time under mild load

Inverters are a can of worms, to power the sockets and other appliances as if on hookup you need some sort of changeover device or use an extension lead or dedicated socket. Then cable size increases the further you are from the battery.

Sounds hard but you'll get plenty of help if needed. But check what batteries you have, also what type if poss and go from there.

 

[peterc10]

We use 12v for TV and charging laptops. Both of them use low voltage DC and it is daft to take low voltage DC and invert it into high voltage AC, and then get the TV or laptop to take that high voltage AC and transform it back to low voltage DC again. As for coffee, the Italians do the best in the world and every Italian family has a stove top Mocha Pot to make good real coffee. That is what we use on the gas hob in the motorhome

 

[Reallyretired]

Inverter should be as close as feasible to the batteries, mine is about 6" away. The mains wiring can be as long as you like. Some use an automatic changeover but I prefer a simple manual one, that way I can use the inverter even on EHU if needed. Some places have only 6A EHU and I have come across 4A on at least one occasion so then I use my electric kettle from the inverter and let the charger catch up in its own time. Some Spanish sites have metered leccy and charge punitive rates so EHU only used for the bare minimum.

 

[funflair]

To put a coffee machine into perspective, the LED lighting in your van will use about 1 amp from the leisure battery . A 1kw coffee machine will use 83 amps!

So that’s 4ah for 4hrs of lighting, run the coffee machine for two minutes and all that won’t be heat cycle so 2 or 3 ah.