Recent Experience - Solar with new mini lite

[jsk125]

New Rockwood mini lite 2511s with two new 12v flooded batteries in parallel.

Experience 1 - a test after I bought it. I store in a lot. Turned 12v fridge on Friday night. Bright sunny weekend. Over two days, with no other electric used - barely dented the batteries. Very sunny weekend. 190w on roof.

Experience 2 - recent boondocking. Very overcast and rainy. I cooled the fridge while driving. used minimal power (I had USB charged lights) Used the water pump. Opened slide outs. Turned fridge to "2" Friday night. Down to about 12.4 volts Saturday. I took out the freezer packs Saturday and put them in the fridge, and turned off the fridge for several hours. Mistake made - used inverter to make coffee. That drove down to 12.3 (I did check only with the controller, not a volt reader). I setup the 100amp portal panel. It pulled about 1 amp, and rooftop about 1.5am. Not much.

Got up to 12.4v. Got nervous and shut off the fridge, put stuff in a cooler (we were leaving Sunday). In the morning, at 12.3v - plenty for tear down. By the time I got home thanks to car charging and solar - 12.5. Two days later - bright sunny day - 12.9v

So clearly - a nice bright sunny weekend with two batteries ,190v on roof and 100v portal panel ... and not using an inverter, stingy with lights .. could get 3 days and maybe 4 that way. Perhaps a bit more if very careful. However, cloudy and overcast - getting 2 days is tough. Serious boondocking (which we don't do much) I'd bring my generator if allowable.

I don't have a victron, and should have checked batteries directly. In the past I have, and volt meter and controller display have been about the same.

So mostly checking informally - hope that helps. Maybe next year I'll get a victron monitor. When I retire and get serious, perhaps another panel on the roof and 6v or lithium. But for now, we use shore power 90% of the time.

[Rolland]

Our Spirit has a 12v Furrion, 100w panel on the roof, then I set it up with 2-6v GC2 deep cycle batteries. Our 4 night dry camping time in June had full sun after 10am, it preformed well and didn’t need to fire up the Genny, but with overcast skies ike you had would have been needed.

One thought to pass along, have the fridge cooled on 110 power before leaving, it helps a lot to reduce 12v power consumption.

We use a Coleman drip coffee maker that can be used on a camp stove or gas stovetop. We don’t have plans to put an inverter in ours, can live without the i
Micro, TV or AC when dry camping.

My plans is to expand our solar to 3-400w on the roof and maybe a portable so your #2 Experience has helped.

Happy Camping!