Adding Solar to 2019 28.5 RSTS

[StevenT]

What wiring or other considerations are necessary to add a 100 W starter solar kit and a 2019 Eagle 28.5 or STS? Our goal is simply to keep the charge on our battery every day using minimal power for lights, water pump, and refrigerator. We camp mainly in the northeast, so we don’t have 100% sunshine but could reasonably keep the panel pointed to the sun for the majority of the day. Is this possible to get the batteries charged in this way? Or do we need a higher wattage set up?

We have a small 1200 watt generator now and we do not need to run it every day...every other day for a couple hours seems to fully charge the battery for us.

[Nathan S.]

First off you really need to figure out exactly what you want to accomplish. Your refrigerator is AC, so without installing an Inverter you won’t be able to run that off your batteries, just your DC systems. No AC, wall plugs, microwave or entertainment systems. The key is how much Ah’s do you have in your battery bank. Typically a single 100w solar panel is used to keep your batteries topped off in storage. It will recharge them, but slowly. We can get by without a generator all night using 4 6V batteries. 340w of panels charges them up in about 2 hours on a sunny day. I have an 1800w inverter installed. But it’s not wired in to the AC, microwave or refrigerator. Just wall outlets and entertainment system.