I have a 400 watt Renology kit on my rig's roof and 2 x 6 volt golf cart batteries.
I do have an inverter...just 500 watts...to run an electric blanket for about 20 minutes to take the chill off the bed.
A 100 watt panel won't get you far. I had a single 100 watt panel on my old popup, and it took care of the basics.
ONE OF THE BASICS is the furnace. You didn't list that.
I recommend that you become familiar with several things:
- 120 volt appliances will draw 10 times their rated amps at 12 volts through an inverter. Case in point, my 360 watt electric blanket draws 30 amps at 12 volts. Here's how to do the math: https://www.rapidtables.com/calc/ele...alculator.html
- A 100 watt panel can generate something like 30 amp hours of charge throughout the course of a whole day UNDER IDEAL CONDITIONS.
- A typical group 24 deep cycle battery is rated at about 75 amp hours (AH). YOU GET TO USE HALF. About 30 to 35 AH per battery. Group 27s and 32s
- Now you see the problem. You have two such batteries with a capacity of about 60 AH usable, and your panel can only produce half of that under ideal circumstances. There's the rub.
- You can't possibly run "real" 120 volt appliances off this system. A microwave will pull 1200 to 1500 watts to start, and about 1000 watts to run. Forget startup, to just run the microwave, you need to supply 83 Amps at 12 volts...more to allow for inefficiencies in the inverter.
- The answer is a bit more solar...perhaps 300 watts or so to accommodate less than ideal weather, AND a generator to run the 120 volt appliances and recharge the batteries in foul weather.
I only use my generator to run 120 volt loads. Micro, espresso machine (we're not savages), AirHead inflator, etc. During the time I'm running the appliances, I might add 5 or 6 AH to the batteries...in the morning when they are low. In the evening, the solar has the batteries charged up, so the genny doesn't add much if anything.
Meanwhile, learn about your 12 volt loads, and don't forget the furnace. Typical amps used by a running furnace (and its fan) are between 5 and 10 amps. Let's say you run the furnace for 8 hours while sleeping. Assume the furnace runs on about a 50% duty cycle overnight. That means 4 hours of run time and 4 hours idle. A furnace that draws 10 amps under those conditions will consume 40 AH all by itself. Then comes the lighting, pump, parasitic loads (CO detector/propane detector, DVD stereo standby power, TV standby power, etc.) that add up to about 3 to 5 AH per day. Watching TV cranks that up to maybe 2 amps per hour while watching. Suddenly your battery well is running dry.
So you must approach this from the consumption end and then build enough solar and battery capacity to meet those needs...or plan on listening to your generator drone on for endless hours charging your battery ... aaahhh camping.
And you need to adjust your expectations.
RVs generally roll off the lot as RV park queens. Nothing wrong with that. But they are NOT setup to boondock until you invest in what you need to enable that capability.
So, read up on solar. Read up on batteries. And read every scrap of paper that came in your owner's packet and make a little spreadsheet of consumption vs. battery capacity vs. solar generation. Do it right, be frugal (less TV, because you are camping after all
) factor in the solar/meteorological conditions where you live, and you can essentially camp endlessly from sprint to fall living on solar power and the genny only when you need to run a big appliance. (on the power front anyway...then there's blackwater, fresh water, propane and supplies...grey water can water the trees, especially in the parched western states).
When I was running off a 100 watt panel and a group 24, we were VERY frugal. No lights, no entertainment via the camper...the stereo had a removable faceplate, and that killed most of the parasitic draw. We used portable lanterns and a mantle lantern. We have a rechargeable blue-tooth speaker and an iPod to play music if we wanted to listen. Any outdoor lighting was via flashlight or portable lantern. With that kind of discipline, we could run the furnace, water pump, igniters for the fridge and hot water, parasitic loads, and, RARELY, snap on a light or two for a couple of minutes. This allowed us to run our electric blanket for a carefully timed 15 minutes at 10 amps for about 8 AH draw. Our small furnace used 5 amps. We could camp indefinitely in sunny CO.
This is one of my favorite rants. It's about power sources. Your rig may have 2 x 20 lb propane tanks on the tongue. Those two tanks of propane carry the energy equivalent of 87 of what used to be the gold standard for battery banks: 4 x 6 volt golf cart batteries. If you convert 40 pounds of propane to the energy equivalent in amp hours, it comes to 20,000 amp hours! That battery bank contains about 230 USABLE AH.
My point is that, as energy storage devices, batteries suck. They are relatively pathetic. But if you know your power consumption and your batteries capacity and your solar charging capacity, you can strike a good balance between energy independence for boondocking and being a park camper relying on shore power. But if you want to run 120 volt appliances, you need an inverter generator.
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