Is a Single 100W Solar Panel Enough for Battery Maintenance on a 2025 295RL?

[Cindy and Ray's Grand Tour]

Our new 295RL came with a 100/50 solar panel with a controller and wired to the battery bank (2 flooded Lead). That seems too little for any real good. Will one 100W panel do my any good at all? Why did they even bother to put a single panel? I was thinking that I might be able to charge the batteries after it was in storage for 2 or 3 months. Just turn it on while the batteries are off about 3 or 4 days prior to pulling the trailer. Any ideas or comments?

 

[St. Michael]

What you have is essentially a trickle charger. Secondary to your converter, on a good day it’s enough to recharge your batteries in 4 or 5 hours after you’ve put the slides out and leveled.

 

[foldbak]

My first upgrade recommendation would be 200ah of lithium battery. I have the same 295. Your description is a bit vague. If you have a Victron 100/50 solar charger you most likely have panels on the roof. If not then your most definitely pre-wired inputs for panels. Do you have an inverter?
The zamp solar input in the wet bay is for a stand alone panel with it's own built in charger. 100 watts will trickle charge as Michael said. If you're off grid it's not going to help much. Attached is a picture of mine showing the two controllers and the batteries and the panel connector. Also a Renogy stand alone panel. I included the lithium location on your convert to change to lithium.

 

[LeftOverParts]

The 100/50 sounds like the solar controller. To expand, you’ll want to decide what you want your solar system to do. We have 500W on the same controller using the 10awg pre-wired roof-to-controller wiring. Depending on what you decide on solar needs, you can expand but stay within your installed system or expand beyond it. We have a resi fridge so we went with 500W to keep the battery charged while traveling and 1-2 days dry camping (without AC).

You can leave it on during storage to keep your battery charged.

 

[Kfinnert]

Good morning -

I agree with the other posts, I would upgrade to a lithium and install a few extra panels that align within your current parameters, too!

To answer the question regarding "what good does it do". If you did not have the system and decided to go solar in the future the huge cost is running the lines for solar. I have an older trailer, and we decided to go to solar so we could Boon Dock. The costs for the hourly wage and the wiring were expensive as expensive as purchasing the panels, controllers and batteries; however, the costs were worth the amount of enjoyment we get from being able to Boon Dock!

Having the trailer prewired and then having options to upgrade is well worth the expense to have it onboard than to do it later! The questions for you are how you plan to use the trailer, do you have enough solar to do as you desired, and what do you want to spend on the system to upgrade? Have fun with the new trailer and enjoy!

 

[rickybobby]

I purchased 2, 300ah batteries and put 1500 watts of Rich 250w panels (6). I have a victron 150/100 controller and getting ready to install the multi plus II inverter/charger to complete my setup. It does well to keep batteries up while traveling, no more fridge on propane while moving. I've run my fireplace, but not AC on current setup. I had a 100w Renogy suitcase panel, it did fairly well when good sun, but not enough for 100% battery charge by end of day. My wife was working, so Starlink, 2 monitors, and a laptop running 8 to 10 hours a day.

 

[Cindy and Ray's Grand Tour]

Thanks for all the answers. I do not plan to upgrade as we don't care to boondock. We are more into Glamping, haha. I was just curious what I might be able to do with just 100W. Sounds like trickle charging while in outside storage might be the extent of it.

 

[flyingjack]

Cindy & Ray: our 2022 solar is stock and trickle charges the RV batteries just fine as is. The only time we boondock is overnight while enroute traveling to or from a far away destination.

 

[foldbak]

We just returned from trip #55. Bodaga bay for 10 days. Only ran the gen for 2 hours for the microwave. Batteries at the lowest were 40% in the morning and 98% by 7pm. Love our solar!