Trying to get my head around the way forward with our van as the current setup doesn't do the necessary job.
Long story short but we should have had a 180W solar panel from new but only a 100W was fitted (Image Attached). I am hopeful that this will be resolved at the end of the month and will be replaced by our dealer with a 180, well 175W according to the Dometic/NDS catalogue so that's an improvement. I'm also going to ask for the original 100W to be refitted, at my expense if need be... (Image Attached)
The main issue in all this is the big Dometic compressor fridge which is great but 12v only. It takes a lot of running.... from tons of research the fridge draws 5amps per hour when its running which is approximately 12 hours every day - the fridge will cycle on and off depending on the temperature, how often the door is opened etc so basically how hard it has to work.
Now under ideal conditions a 100W solar panel will put back 5amps per hour so you can see its not going to work for long without driving or going on hookup. That's borne out by our own experience in our first 3 months of ownership.
We have 2 x 92ah AGM batteries which means a usable capacity of 90/100amps maximum to draw from. I found a video on YouTube that showed approximate consumptions of usual items (we don't have a microwave though) and the Watts they equate to, which for us would therefore be about 1000W(1kw), per day. (Image Of Screenshot Attached)
To generate that 1000W minimum I reckon we need a 200W/300W of solar panels but this is where I glaze over! All this talk of volts, watts and amps just has me going round in circles. (Images of proposed panels and sketch of layout attached)
At the moment we have a Victron 75/15 Solar Controller (Image Attached) which I'm thinking will be on, or over, its limit with the new setup.
So based on that long winded post can anyone confirm that I'm on the right track and the above makes some sense please?
My plan is to first upgrade the solar as above and at some later date go to Lithium but I'm reluctant to 'bin' my, still new, AGMs just yet.
Long story short but we should have had a 180W solar panel from new but only a 100W was fitted (Image Attached). I am hopeful that this will be resolved at the end of the month and will be replaced by our dealer with a 180, well 175W according to the Dometic/NDS catalogue so that's an improvement. I'm also going to ask for the original 100W to be refitted, at my expense if need be... (Image Attached)
The main issue in all this is the big Dometic compressor fridge which is great but 12v only. It takes a lot of running.... from tons of research the fridge draws 5amps per hour when its running which is approximately 12 hours every day - the fridge will cycle on and off depending on the temperature, how often the door is opened etc so basically how hard it has to work.
Now under ideal conditions a 100W solar panel will put back 5amps per hour so you can see its not going to work for long without driving or going on hookup. That's borne out by our own experience in our first 3 months of ownership.
We have 2 x 92ah AGM batteries which means a usable capacity of 90/100amps maximum to draw from. I found a video on YouTube that showed approximate consumptions of usual items (we don't have a microwave though) and the Watts they equate to, which for us would therefore be about 1000W(1kw), per day. (Image Of Screenshot Attached)
To generate that 1000W minimum I reckon we need a 200W/300W of solar panels but this is where I glaze over! All this talk of volts, watts and amps just has me going round in circles. (Images of proposed panels and sketch of layout attached)
At the moment we have a Victron 75/15 Solar Controller (Image Attached) which I'm thinking will be on, or over, its limit with the new setup.
So based on that long winded post can anyone confirm that I'm on the right track and the above makes some sense please?
My plan is to first upgrade the solar as above and at some later date go to Lithium but I'm reluctant to 'bin' my, still new, AGMs just yet.
If it ain't broke..... Don't fix it!
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