As battery capacity is measured in a h amp hours you need to know the solar panel current to estimate how quickly it will charge your battery for example.
How many watt solar panel do i need for my caravan.
Find out which solar panel you need for reference to keep your caravan and motorhome battery topped up while on site you would need at least a 40w panel to achieve this.
To estimate charge created multiply this figure by the hours of daylight sunshine exposure.
If you have a 200a h battery this will take approximately.
Size of panel required panels have a rating in watts typically 5 200w or higher.
100 amp hours of useable power from a battery contains roughly 1280 watts of power 100ah x 12 8 volts 1280 watts of power the average hours of sunlight per day in the continental us is 6 hours.
Therefore you will need to choose a solar panel which can provide 55ah of power per day.
From here we can determine that two of these 100 watt panels would give us about 65 16 amp hours a day which covers our requirement of 50 amp hours.
If a 100w caravan solar panel produces approximately 4 5a per hour in bright sunshine.
How many watts of solar panels do i need to recharge my batteries.
When roof size is limited efficient panels with a high wattage can make the system more compact.
Running additional electrical devices such as microwaves and laptops will add further strain.
To work out the size of the panel we need we simply take the 28 45 x 18v average voltage of a solar panel 512w.
Using the above example of 170ah it needs to produce 28 45 amps per hour for 6 hours.
For any given energy production target you need fewer panels if their individual wattage is higher.
Wattage rating x hours of daylight sunshine total watts per day.
Battery capacity amp hours energy watt hours voltage volts as an example if you have an 110ah amp hours battery and it has lasted for two days on your trip you need an average of 55ah per day.
Our final personal determination.
Panel specifications the power rating of panels varies depending on the model and manufacturer but most range from 250 watts to 330 watts.
For our specific power demands we need one 100 watt portable solar panel to recharge our rv batteries during our boondocking camping trips under normal conditions.