We have been talking more and more about staying more often in National Forest, Parks, or State Park campgrounds. The principal reason is for esthetics and room, but the money sure doesn't hurt either. We made a real effort this trip to visit and evaluate a bunch of campgrounds, and most of them we can fit into, and are beautiful. Most of the public campgrounds don't have hook ups, so you boondock. That is, you are self-sufficient. I've been doing quite a bit of research on solar systems and think this winter we will install 4-5 panels to augment our battery charging ability. We have a large AGM battery bank that came with our particular motorhome. We have a lot of capacity, but we draw a lot also. With solar we would expect to run the generator less often, not replace it. We have one solar panel now, but it does little more than supply a very small trickle charge.
I talked to Lifeline batteries, the brand we have, and to Magnum Energy, the manufacturer of our inverter/charger in order to set up a better charging profile to better accommodate our batteries. Another challenge as you do the research is to find out what your electrical draw is. Unfortunately, the bigger and more complex the motorhome is, our case, the more parasitic draw there is. And it's very hard to isolate all the items. Magnum makes a Battery Monitor which would interface with our inverter remote to allow us to see our draw and also the state of our batteries at any point. Magnum informed me today my inverter is compatible with the monitor, but our remote is not, but if I buy the Battery Monitor, they will upgrade my remote for free. So that is the first project, getting the monitor installed.
Visiting in Longview today, and off to Atlanta tomorrow.
2 comments:
Bill, we boondock quite a bit especially at road races and in similar State and Federal parks too. The solar panel helps if you are in the direct sun but we usually find that turning off all electricity consuming items helps a great deal. Also if you have dual inverters, find out which leg you could do without and turn it off. We find that the auto generator start feature usually only comes on once a day and sufficiently charges the AGM battery set unless we need the hair dryer, microwave etc. Do you have a system display like Aladdin or some similar in your coach where you can monitor the power being used?
Chuck, great to hear from you! I only have one inverter. Yes, I have an Aladdin, but it doesn't give very detailed info, that's why I'm going to add the Magnum Battery Monitor Kit so I can better see the draw and the state of the batteries. I need to experiment more with the auto start, if it only needs to run once a day, then maybe the solar array is overkill????
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