[gjennings]

Originally Posted by jcurtis934

Solar panels come in various sizes, depending on their wattage rating. Solar panels charge battery bank directly, while the inverter would get its power from the batteries. The onboard battery charger built into the converter would not be running if you had no external source of 120vac power. So, as noted above, the fridge powered by the inverter could run for a certain time period based on the size of your battery bank. You never want to draw the batteries below 50% power as that shortens their life and a lot of batteries aren't that well designed and built to start with. Basically, the fridge will draw a max of 30 amps of 12vdc without the icemaker running. Minimum power draw depends on how it is loaded, temperature inside the trailer as influenced by the outside weather, and how much you are opening the fridge or freezer. IF you only had one crappy group 24 battery installed when you got the trailer, it would be somewhere about 65 amphr max and you can only draw out 32 amphrs before you shorten the life of the battery OR about an hour of fridge time IF it was drawing its max wattage draw of 360 watts. I run two group 31 agm batteries in my bank, so I have at least three hours if the fridge were drawing max current all that time...which it doesn't. If you want solar to not have to worry about how long your batteries can run the inverter and you will not be running anything else off the batteries, then a smaller solar farm would suffice...like one 1000 watt panel. But if you want to start adding in the requirement to run things like powered vents, lights, running awning in and out...then you need to figure out how much 12vdc wattage you are going to be using before you can size the solar panel requirement.

Not sure they make a 1000 watt panel and if they do I would think it would be to big for a trailer.... lol