Add more House Batteries or add Solar?

[Gary Hatt - Publisher BCM]

With the price of House Batteries constantly increasing and the price of Solar constantly decreasing, is it time to consider solar for a bus rather than replacing your battery bank with so many batteries if you plan to replace all of your Batteries anyway and also plan to spend a few weeks boondocking in the coming months? 

[lostagain]

Solar is only good when the sun shines high. Which I guess would work in the South where you  mostly roam. It doesn't work worth a $#!% when it is cloudy, or parked in the shade, or in the winter anywhere North of you. And you don't have government subsidies to run your diesel genny to make up, unless you have connections that we don't know about...

JC

[solardude]

Gary - I don't know how much you are looking to spend, but there is some really neat tech in development currently. The new 340W panels are awesome, combined with some of the new batteries, Tesla Powerwall comes to mind for a highly recognized product...Tesla is not the only company making these, there are many others that will be released in the coming year. The point being that if you are thinking about adding some new gadgets there is some good stuff coming soon. As an example: The Tesla Powerwall is 13.5kWh, with a 7kW inverter total cost is about $6K. Who knows how long these things last, but it would be fun to try.
SolarDude

[lostagain]

Having said that, in my above post, solar is great when the sun shines. My bus came with a nice solar system from the PO. But, in your shoes Gary, I would really evaluate the cost of a meaningful solar system, compared to how much generator fuel you could buy with the money... I'm all for saving the planet by not burning fossil fuel, but the few thousand dollars for solar would go a long way to fuel the genny.

JC

[bobofthenorth]

Having said that, in my above post, solar is great when the sun shines. My bus came with a nice solar system from the PO. But, in your shoes Gary, I would really evaluate the cost of a meaningful solar system, compared to how much generator fuel you could buy with the money... I'm all for saving the planet by not burning fossil fuel, but the few thousand dollars for solar would go a long way to fuel the genny.

JC

What he said.  Solar is mostly a lifestyle choice - it makes no economic sense whatsoever.  I put 700 watts on the boat because it let me significantly reduce my generator runtime.  I don't think 2000 watts would have eliminated the need for a generator.  Solar does really well what your generator does poorly - finish off a charge on the batteries.  When you start out charging a depleted battery bank, even if its only down 20 or 30%, your charger will put some serious amps (70 to 100) into the bank which means you may actually be working the genny a bit AT THE START OF THE CHARGE CYCLE. However that quickly tapers off and pretty soon you're maybe only putting 20 amps into your batteries.  At that point you're burning a lot of fuel, making a lot of noise and heat to generate a couple hundred watts of power and you'll need to do that for literally hours to completely top off the batteries.  That's where solar "shines" if you'll pardon the pun.

[Utahclaimjumper]

 A large battery bank is indispensable to a solar system,,you can create all the power you wish, using any form you wish, and still need a place to store it.. One does not work well without the other.>>>D  ( Don't forget the weight and maintenance penalty and you get with a LARGE bank

[chessie4905]

Gary,, do you really need more complications? Solar may be hot right now, and if you are always in sunshine, great. Just more stuff to diagnose/repair/replace.Instead you could add a Honda whisper quiet 600 generator for charging batteries. The only problem is you have to constantly drain fuel from them because they make it instead of burning it. Or you could bite the bullet and do the AGM, with fewer larger ones.

[Geoff]

I see it now, a bus conversion parked in the hot sun instead of some shade to keep the solar panels working...  Generator running to keep cool with air conditioning...  Campsite flooding from melting ice caps...

[sledhead]

like Geoff said

we always try to park in the shade and 90 % of the time that is what happens . I had a small solar systems on the M C I and it did a good job topping up the battery bank but yes you had to be in the sun and almost all the time we were in the sun was when we were driving and then the diesel engine was running

If we were off grid camping a honda 1000 watt gene would work fine for the finished charge  and for pennies and very little noise but yes it is a pain in the a$$ to have to use premium gas both for storage and the fact that the genne only holds a small amount of gas

go with a large battery bank

dave 

[buswarrior]

A pair of solar panels on a mobile rack, same as folks set up the satelite TV dish...

Coach under the tree, solar and TV on a leash out to the clear sky?

Our mutual friend Doug has done the solar-panel-on-a-leash thing.

happy coaching!
buswarrior

[richard5933]

Anyone have photos of a setup using remote/portable panels? This is something that I'd be interested in to use to top off the large house battery bank we're installing on the 4108.

[bobofthenorth]

Anyone have photos of a setup using remote/portable panels? This is something that I'd be interested in to use to top off the large house battery bank we're installing on the 4108.

Think carefully about that. Its one of those ideas that sounds better in the abstract than it will in reality.  Unless you set up somewhere and never move they're going to be a royal pain to set up and tear down whenever you move not to mention the need to transport them without breaking them.  You're unlikely to set up more than a couple hundred watts if you are moving regularly and as I've already stated anything less than 400 watts is a complete joke.  Maybe if you've got a home base where you spend a lot of time it might make sense to put up some panels but moving them regularly is going get old real quick. REAL quick.

[windtrader]

Solar does really well what your generator does poorly - finish off a charge on the batteries.  When you start out charging a depleted battery bank, even if its only down 20 or 30%, your charger will put some serious amps (70 to 100) into the bank which means you may actually be working the genny a bit AT THE START OF THE CHARGE CYCLE. However that quickly tapers off and pretty soon you're maybe only putting 20 amps into your batteries.  At that point you're burning a lot of fuel, making a lot of noise and heat to generate a couple hundred watts of power and you'll need to do that for literally hours to completely top off the batteries.  That's where solar "shines" if you'll pardon the pun.

Bob
This is my exact thinking on solar. It is not planned to replace the generator, rather used to top off and maintain the battery bank at 100%. Unless the generator is pushing the AC, it really really seems like a huge waste of energy and wear and tear on the generator to be float/trickle charging the battery bank.

It does seem with optimized energy use (except AC) and a properly sized house battery bank and solar panels, it should be quite reasonable to have the panels charge the battery bank during the day (weather permitting).

Not sure why so much back and forth on the issue but usage profiles can be quite different from one nut to another.

[Gary Hatt - Publisher BCM]

I am under the assumption that if I install solar panels, living in Southern California, that when I go boondocking it will maintain my batteries better by slowly charging them all day every day better than a generator will. Someone told me that batteries can be charged up to 80% with a generator relatively quickly, but the last 20% can take hours.  Whereas solar panels would pretty much keep them topped off most of the day which should lead to healthier batteries. 

What are your thoughts on this?

[buswarrior]

Good advice, Gary.

Generator does the heavy lifting, solar finishes them off.

Happy coaching!
Buswarrior