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Topic: Solar power

smyrl

22/4/2016 at 3:42pm
Location: linconshire
Outfit: Caravan and tent

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Hello everybody just wanted to pick your brains if I can.! have fitted a 100 watt solar panel to my Swift cornetti diamond 1993 it has two 110 amp hour batteries. Now I am faced with two Solutions I can buy a 1500 watt pure sine wave inverter to connect to the batteries purely just to run the fridge 60 Watts, the trouble I am faced with he's if I plug the power lead from the caravan into the inverter effectively powering itself to the 1500 watt inverter it will power the fridge and charge the battery is there a way where I can disconnect the mains charger so the inverter will run the caravan electrics I E television fridge lighting without powering the caravan battery charger because I have been told this will cause a loop which will destroy the inverter and batteries. All good I find the 12 volt connection to the fridge and one that straight from the charge controller form the solar system and how would I find them wires hope explain this properly thank you for your replies and timetime..

DaveCoaches

22/4/2016 at 7:00pm
Location: None Entered
Outfit: Coachman Pastiche

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A 100 watt solar panel is not going to run your fridge through a 1.5kw inverter for long.

Firstly the 100 watt solar panel won't put out 100 watts all day, only in direct sunlight which at best will be a few hours.

Secondly the regulator won't be 100% efficient so you can probably deduct 10% of the solar panel capacity just lost on that.

An inverter generally consumes around 10% of its capacity, so a big inverter like that will use pretty much everything the solar panel puts in on its own.

There is a switch on my charger which I can turn off to connect an inverter to my ehu input. This is great inasmuch as I can use my internal sockets to plug in a tv etc, but in reality, a few hours watching tv and some 12 volt lights is about the limit for a 100 watt panel. Run the fridge on gas.

Grampian91

22/4/2016 at 8:30pm
Location: Midlands
Outfit: Mondeo Avondale Gram

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My charger has an on/off switch on it but as above your 60watt fridge will be using 80+ watts on the inverter.

You will be lucky if your 2 batteries last 24 hours. And you wont have enough daylight to recharge them.

Run the fridge on gas if your not on a hookup.

DaveS1

23/4/2016 at 9:11am
Location: Hatfield Peverel Essex
Outfit: Ace Supreme Twinstar Disco 3

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Agree with the above comments -- if it works at all, it won't work for long and I wouldn't have thought the effort would be worthwhile.
I hope that the second battery is contained within a properly sealed and vented box and is not under a bed giving off explosive gases!
DaveS1

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