Quote:
Originally Posted by DavidG425
Hi all,
We are finally living our dream full timing in our new 2020 Montana 3813, in sunny Southern California (at least for the foreseeable future).
The RV park we are at is gougins us on the electric bill by chargins us in the next higher tier based on the electric company's rates, so I am wondering if it would be worth the expense to install solar. When we purchased our coach, I did not opt for the Super Solar Flex system because I could not get any information about it from our dealer or Keystone, and thought the $20K price tag was a bit steep.
Our coach has the usual RV DC powered stuff (smoke/CO detectors, almost all lighting), plus the usual AC powered stuff (TV, microwave, fridge, 3-A/C's), plus a washer and dryer.
I am currently working from home, so my laptop plus a "normal" monitor is on most of the day as well. It gets hot here in the summer and I am able to run all 3 A/C's (Coleman power saver models)on shore power, but not sure if I would be able to do that with solar.
From the research that I have done, I'm pretty sure that I want to go with lithium batteries. GoPower solar products seems to be used by several other RV manufacturers, and I have seen some of their components at nearby dealers.
So my questions are:
1. How much of the shore power cord could I cut by adding solar?
2. How much would the solar system cost to do this?
3. What components would you suggest?
4. Would it be worth it in the long run?
Thanks in advance for your help
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I just finished installing my solar system. The first thing you need to understand is running AC is NOT something I would consider for boondocking unless you were prepared to either install a fairly large generator for 3 AC's and fuel it with ??? Propane is low power, diesel is much better but needs care so as to not spill ay as the smell will NEVER go away. My cost for one 3000 watt inverter, 4 Battle Born 100AH 12V batteries and 4 170Watt panels plus incidentals would cost you between $10,000 and $15,000 depending on how much you do and how fancy. For what you are wanting the cost would be well north of $20,000. I dis mine so I can boondock 5 days out of 7. The saving in park fees will pay for the installation in less than 2 years. I pay $0.15 per kWh and during the maybe 6 months of decent solar can save a few dollars there. There is a US government website that will tell you for a given latitude and date what the solar will be. I would recommend Victron over any other brand however, the inverter I have will allow me to hook up to a 30A post and still run anything I want but only on one leg. I moved a coupe of wires in the main RV power panel so that my non inverter side of the panel is washer, dryer, elec part of hw, fireplace, bedroom ac, spare. In a boondocking scenario I would not normally use any of those, but I can by plugging into my twin Honda 2000's for 30A service plus another 20 from the batteries. Lot's of wrong info out there, but the truth can be found. Just check everything from multiple sources. Your residential fridge accounts for 1.5kWh per day, that's about 1.5 of those $950 lithium batteries. I have that fridge and 4 batteries. I can't stay my 5 days without sun. I don't like to use the gennie unless it's an emergency. The 2nd or 1st battery pig is the furnace.