Well boys I joined the Lithium Club

[JM0397]

Like SecondChance said above, it all depends on your battery capacity.

Solar is not where your capacity comes from, your capacity to run items comes from your battery bank and the Inverter that you choose.

For example: if you had a single Lithium battery (LiFePo4) with 100 ah capacity, you could probably boondock for 2 to 4 nights if you only used the 12 volt accessories in your camper (and you did not need to run the furnace). For some campers that is enough, they are perfectly happy with being able to use their camper for a few nights without the added noise of a generator.

On the other hand, if you were living in your coach full-time, you might have a Residential Refrigerator or want to use the entertainment center on a regular basis, maybe use your Insta Pot sometimes and have a fan running to circulate the air inside the coach. This would require an Inverter and more energy storage to prevent you from running out of power in the middle of the night.

Your Solar panels are used mainly to re-charge the battery bank and not to directly power your appliances (though on Sunny days the batteries stay fully charged and most of the energy consumed comes from the Solar panels).

The trick is to figure out your needs when it comes to the size of your Battery Bank, and then to figure how much Solar you need to support that Battery Bank.

As an example; we boondock a lot. We also boondock where the nights can get pretty cold (even in FL it can get pretty cold at night). Consequently, we need a pretty large battery bank just to keep the furnace running (Furnaces in RVs are just Power Pigs). On top of that, we envision that we may need to run the A/C a little bit at night if we find ourselves in a hot and muggy location. We also like to use our entertainment system in the evenings and we realize that every day is not Sunny and bright, so, we increased the size of our Battery Bank to allow for a few cloudy days.

Where we ended up at was 800 ah of usable Battery storage (2 Tesla Model S, 24 volt, battery modules), a 3000 Watt Victron Inverter that powers both sides of the 50 amp Breaker Box, and 1,200 Watts (4, 305 Watt residential Solar panels) of Solar on the roof.

With this system, we have plenty of power for all the 12 volt accessories in the coach, Including running the Furnace. We also have 120 volt power in all the receptacles and we can run our A/C for a few hours if we need to.

Howdy, thanks for the breakdown!
If you don’t mind sharing, did you self-install or hire it out?
And what’s your total costs for the full setup?

Thanks!

[SolarPoweredRV]

Howdy, thanks for the breakdown!
If you don’t mind sharing, did you self-install or hire it out?
And what’s your total costs for the full setup?

Thanks!

I self installed the entire system. The key to my system is the two Tesla Model S batteries. Everything else is built around these batteries.

If I were designing a new system today, I would forgo using the Tesla Battery Modules and build a DIY LiFePo4 battery bank using the 280 ah LiFePo4 batteries available direct from China.

I really like the 24 volt Architecture, however Victron has a new 12 volt 3000 Watt Inverter/Charger that will feed both legs of your 50 amp coach (if they make a 24 volt unit that feeds both 50 amp legs, I'm back to the 24v architecture).

As far as price; I saved a lot of money in two areas, the batteries and the Solar panels. The Solar panels are residential Solar panels and I bought them for $0.69 cents per Watt (today you can easily get equivalent residential panels for $0.54 cents per Watt). The Tesla batteries were 1/5 the price of Battle Born batteries.

The remainder of the system was control modules, the Inverter/Charger and all the wiring components.

Basically I got a $20,000 system for about a quarter of the price. Based on using the DIY LiFePo4 batteries and the lower priced Solar panels, today, I could save about $1,500 to $2,000 if I were to do a similar system.

FYI: Almost all my components are from Victron or Blue Sea.