The Jackery 1000 combined with 2x100 Watt panels would be perfect for a simple plug-and-play build. I cannot even fathom spending $1400-1600 plus tax on a basic setup like that though. I do appreciate you linking it, the guy had some other sweet things he did with his rig that I could see myself doing in my build.
I learned all of this in my web design/navigation class! Incidentally, I seem to have forgotten it all until your reminder here. This is going to make it so much easier finding all those threads that have sunk deep into the forum.
Treating solar as a 'cool trend' along with not fully understanding the true output in various circumstances is a fatal flaw in these builds. Solar is not the solution for an overwhelming majority of these setups.Installing solar works the same on a house as a car, so looking Here for that info doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
Personally, I've been down the solar route before and it doesn't fit my style of camping. It's best suited for open areas (not parking under trees/in the shade) where you don't move for long stretches of time. I've found that a 100ah LiFePO4 gives me somewhere between 3 and 4 days of power for my needs/uses. I tend to use 5 gallons of water in ~3 days and carry ~3 days of food with me, so that's my limit of staying in 1 spot. Plus, I'm on the east coast, so trees everywhere and you Want the shade. The time I'm out in the Rockies I get a Little more sun, but still pretty shaded. I was simply never getting as much charge as I was using so I had to constantly top-off with a shore charger. 2nd iteration I went with a 40a DC-DC charger, which takes 2 hours of driving to FULLY top my battery from an unusable state. No idea on idle to charge as I've not needed to do that in 3 years and ~ 180 nights of camping. I don't even have a shore-power charging option for this setup. Doesn't have the "look at me!" factor of solar, but cheaper, more robust and works better. Also, there are hybrid systems that allow multiple charge sources if you really want to leave your options open to go any direction.
Consider Your use before going one way or another. Just because the lemmings are jumping off the cliff, doesn't mean that's the best option.....
This is my charger: 12V DC-DC On-Board Battery Charger | Renogy Solar ~ and no, I see no difference in fuel economy with the charger running (it's switched in 2 ways, a main on/off so I'm not charging while not camping and a 5min delay so the load isn't added to a cold-start engine).
I haven't got around to posting my solar setup in my build thread, so I'll just put it here for now. My setup is really small. The main goal was to just offset the fridge/recoup as much as I could, but the panel size I could use was really limited due to wanting to fit them in the Gobi rack.
It's two 30W Amazon panels in series, so that I have a better shot at getting some power while in the shade, since it's overcast so much here. I wanted an MPPT controller so it wouldn't create interference with my ham radio, the way PWM controllers reportedly do. This is the controller I used, and I really like it. Amazon.com: Victron Energy SmartSolar MPPT 75V 10 amp 12/24-Volt Solar Charge Controller (Bluetooth): Industrial & Scientific The bluetooth is great for keeping an eye on things (let's be honest, this is most of the fun of a solar setup), and you can even run their management software on a raspberry pi, to keep an eye on things remotely. I used that for a while to monitor my battery level from inside the house while the truck was parked outside.
This setup is not big enough to run the fridge for multiple days, as I quickly found. It is enough to keep my aux battery from draining down during the work day with the truck in a wide open parking lot, and the fridge running a lot because of the sun.
Some numbers. Testing at my house (mostly shaded) showed that on an approx 70F day my 37L ARB fridge used about 320Wh hooked up to 120V, using a KillAWatt meter. The best solar harvest I had at my house with about a 5 hour window of clear sun was 230Wh, with the controller using about 20Wh itself. On an overcast day it's about half that. When I tested it at work (wide open parking lot, full sun) I came out and the aux battery was sitting at 12.66V after the fridge ran the full day. The panels sucked up 250Wh during my 8 hour shift, and the first few hours weren't optimal, since I started at 7.
When the fridge isn't in the truck, it's great, because I've never come out to an aux battery that was anything less than tip top.
Would I do it again? If I already had the dual battery setup and all of that infrastructure, the solar stuff (panels and controller) was less than $200, and I have zero complaints. Is it a viable off-grid setup? No, definitely not at this size.
This is the full extended version of the OVERLAND SOLAR 130W panel under the 105W panel
