What say you

[h2ojocky]

I am considering adding some solar to my rig to maintain my batteries while boondocking. I have 1 pair of 225 amp hour 6 volt batteries. This is what I use: LED lights, hydraulic slides, landing gear, RV refir. I already have a 3500 watt generator but would like to be able to maintain batteries without using the generator. How much solar do you think I would need? I am not looking at spending a ton of money. TIA

[DQDick]

We boondocked a lot when we had our 2010. We had seven solar pannels and six golf cart batteries and still didn't have enough power to run the fridge on electic most of the time. We spent a lot of money and were happy with it except that we spend way too much time where it's hot and so we still needed other power to stay cool. Thus neither of our two curent rigs have solar at all.

[rames14]

Russ/Linda, a couple of suggestions based on a year in with our Super Solar system. This is just my opinion based on our experiences. Like you we have an RV refrigerator. Our unit consumes about 10 amps/hr with nothing running other than inverter, device chargers and monitors/detectors. We have 1200 watts of solar and 540 ah of lithium batteries. It sounds like you want to dip your toe in the Solar Sandbox. (2) 100 ah lithiums will do almost what your (2) 6v batteries do now. We get between 4 and 8 kWh of solar from our 1200 watt. The rule of thumb is figure 5 hours of production, so you could start with 400 watts to start and see how you do. A good first start would be to add your battery monitor (Victron Smart Shunt). This will allow you to determine what you need. The thing we like most about lithium batteries is how fast they charge.