Today I undid the roof solar panels. Wayne helped me get then down off the roof. Newmar said they won’t touch the roof unless all the “extra” customer installed items are removed. OK – sounds reasonable to me. The Datastorm-HughesNet dish is gone. Now the solar panels are off and stored.
I have 4 solar panels. Two are 120 watts and two are 125’s for a total of 490 watts. That’s pretty good. They are hooked up to 6 six volt batteries which again is pretty good. Now this did not happen all at once. I started off with one solar panel and then another. Then when my Mom stopped RVing I got her two solar panels. If you went out to buy all this stuff at once it would cost between $2,500 and $3,000.
What do I think of solar panels. It’s great but the cost is too great. If I was starting from scratch again it would just cost too much to get everything at once. I think batteries are the way to go. Get extra batteries. As many as you can carry safely of course.
The most we ever boone docked (no hook ups) was 58 out of 60 days in Alaska years ago. We used the generator because we didn’t have solar back then. It’s nice not to have to turn on the generator if you are staying somewhere a few days without hook ups. We now can go indefinitely without needing electricity as long as the sun is out for a few hours each day. Of course if it’s in the 90’s it’s time to move or get hook ups. Can’t run the AC. Also, if we use the RV heat system a lot it will eat up the electricity especially in the Beast because of the Hydro Hot system. This system has 6 fan motors that run the heat. This is when we break out the Mr Buddy heat machine. It does us fine.
Bottom line - if you got money to spend get large solar panels, a high end controller and a lot of batteries. Otherwise hit the generator button.
See ya……..
