How Many Solar Panels Do You Need To Run An Rv

You will need at least 1 800 watts of solar panels to run your rv air conditioner.

How many solar panels do you need to run an rv. 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. Most solar panels feature one hundred watts of power and are capable of producing about six amps for each peak sun hour. This is assuming you are considering using 12 volt rv grade panels. To generate the stored electricity needed to run our rv air conditioner all day you d need over 340 square feet of solar panels ish plus 3600 amp hours of battery capacity and guaranteed perfect sunshine.

This equals thirty amp hours a day meaning you would need two one hundred watt panels to fully recharge your rv. 100 amp hours useable or 1280 watts of batteryin 6 hours you will need 213 watts of solar panels. This is also assuming of course you have a lot of battery power too. 213 watts of solar x 6 hours 1280 watts of stored power key takeaway estimate 200 watts of solar panelsper 100 amp hours of useable batterycapacity 100ah lithium or 200ah agm.

The general rule of thumb is that a 100 watt solar panel can produce about 30 amp hours per day so you can use this guideline to determine about how many panels you need. This doesn t include the solar power needed to run anything else in the rv. By this estimate we ll need about 2 500 watts of solar panels just to break even on the ac unit s consumption.