{"id":8104,"date":"2021-06-15T11:53:17","date_gmt":"2021-06-15T01:53:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.4wdsupacentre.com.au\/news\/?p=8104"},"modified":"2021-06-15T11:54:01","modified_gmt":"2021-06-15T01:54:01","slug":"how-to-choose-the-right-size-solar-panel-and-deep-cycle-batteries-for-camping","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.emgcloud.net\/news\/how-to-choose-the-right-size-solar-panel-and-deep-cycle-batteries-for-camping\/","title":{"rendered":"How to choose the right size solar panel and deep cycle batteries for camping"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A 98Ah deep cycle battery<\/strong><\/a> will let you run a 45L Camping Fridge<\/strong><\/a> for around 50 hours, assuming that the compressor fridge<\/strong> <\/a>is drawing around one amp hour on average. Of course how efficiently a 12V fridge\/freezer<\/strong><\/a> runs is affected by temperature, how many times you open your camp fridge<\/strong><\/a> and whether you add more items into the portable fridge<\/strong><\/a> that need to be cooled down. When you think about it, 50 hours is more than two full days and nights \u2013 which is perfect for some campers. But if you wanted to extend the run time of your camping fridge\/freezer<\/strong><\/a> without getting more battery capacity, one the best and easiest ways is to connect a portable solar panel<\/strong><\/a> to your setup every day of your trip! Now so long as the sun is out your camping solar panel<\/strong><\/a> will be charging your camping battery<\/strong><\/a>, or topping it up so the deep cycle battery<\/strong><\/a> is going to stay at 100% capacity.<\/p>\n

Once the sun goes down your camp fridge<\/strong><\/a> is continuing to draw power\u2026 let\u2019s imagine the sun goes down at 6PM and wakes up again at 6AM, but you\u2019re camped near a tree line and the sun doesn\u2019t really hit your campsite (or your camping solar setup<\/strong><\/a>) until 8AM. By 8AM your fridge has used 14AH of auxiliary battery <\/strong><\/a>capacity, so when your 12V solar panel<\/strong><\/a> starts working again, you\u2019re already down to 86AH. If you only have a camping<\/strong> solar panel<\/strong><\/a> capable of less than 60Watts, even in ideal conditions your camp solar panel will be only able to supply enough to keep it at that level of charge all day until the sun goes down again. The next morning you wake up and your deep cycle battery<\/strong><\/a> is now down to 72AH\u2026 This will continue for a couple days until you reach 50% capacity and really need to charge your auxiliary battery<\/strong><\/a> back up otherwise you\u2019re starting to cause potential long term damage and drop in overall capacity. This is of course only true in ideal conditions too, so in the real world it\u2019s so important to upsize your camping solar setup<\/strong><\/a> to the biggest you can afford and manage in your vehicle!<\/p>\n

The only way to solve the issue is by stepping up to a larger battery, a more powerful solar panel or ideally both! Running two 98AH AGM deep cycle batteries<\/strong><\/a> and a 160W Solar panel with MPPT regulator<\/strong><\/a> would extend your camping time massively. But you still need to be aware that poor weather, not-ideal camping<\/strong> solar panel<\/strong><\/a> angle and panel temperature will affect the portable solar panel <\/strong><\/a>output – plus the ambient temperature, what your camping fridge<\/strong><\/a> is set to, how many times and how often you\u2019re opening your 12V<\/strong> camp fridge<\/strong><\/a> and whether it\u2019s copping any sun will affect how much power your compressor fridge<\/strong><\/a> is using. Plus you might want to run more than just a camping fridge<\/strong><\/a>! So anytime you charge your phone or turn on any LED camp lights<\/strong><\/a> you\u2019re using more power that your portable solar setup<\/strong><\/a> has to add back in.\u2028<\/p>\n

Each battery will also have a maximum charge rate \u2013 this is a limit for charging current that you shouldn\u2019t exceed, but also means that bigger batteries can accept more charge and therefore charge at a higher rate than smaller batteries. For example, a 115Ah AGM deep cycle Battery<\/strong><\/a> can be charged at up to around 30Amps. The second point here is that once an AGM battery<\/strong><\/a> reaches max charging voltage, the current allowed into the battery from the solar regulator will decrease \u2013 so being able to get more current into the battery early is great and is another big positive of a bigger portable solar setup \u2013 such as 250W Folding Blanket<\/strong>.<\/a> While it\u2019s capable of putting out max power around 20 Amps, the deep cycle battery<\/strong> <\/a>will eventually limit the amount of power coming in once it has reached maximum voltage.<\/p>\n

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Let\u2019s look at a real world example! \u00a0If your portable camping solar panel<\/strong><\/a> can put out a maximum of 10 Amps, consider that you\u2019ll lose some power output in real world conditions, let\u2019s say it\u2019s now at 8 Amps. Plus it\u2019s an extremely hot day, so your camping fridge<\/strong><\/a> is working harder, plus you\u2019re opening your fridge to grab cool drinks more than usual\u2026 so it\u2019s drawing 2Ah on average. Next you\u2019re also charging a phone or tablet from your battery, using about another A\/h per hour\u2026 You\u2019re now only getting 5A of actual charge going into your deep cycle battery<\/strong><\/a> from your portable solar panel<\/strong><\/a> that is capable of a possible 10A. If your auxiliary<\/strong> battery<\/strong> <\/a>is almost full, then running 5 Amps is enough to keep it topped up – the battery probably can\u2019t accept much more than that anyway with its state of charge. That means it\u2019ll easily stay nice and charged overnight\u2026 If on the other hand your house battery<\/strong><\/a> is already down to about 60 or 70% capacity, the 5 amps coming from your undersized solar panel<\/strong><\/a> is now not ideal! The battery can accept a much higher rate of charge so it\u2019s going to take even longer to reach the maximum voltage, so you may never fully charge up your battery in this situation! So, you need to upsize your camping solar setup<\/strong><\/a> to take into account not only the weather and the real world, but also the properties of your deep cycle battery and the way it will charge \u2013 in the above example a 250W solar Panel<\/strong><\/a> capable of up to 20Amps of charge could\u2019ve put in 15 amps of charge instead of the smaller panel\u2019s five amps \u2013 and that makes a massive difference to your battery charge and how long you can happily stay at camp!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A 98Ah deep cycle battery will let you run a 45L Camping Fridge for around 50 hours, assuming that the compressor fridge is drawing around one amp hour on average. Of course how efficiently a 12V fridge\/freezer runs is affected by temperature, how many times you open your camp fridge and whether you add more…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":123456,"featured_media":7965,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.emgcloud.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8104"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.emgcloud.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.emgcloud.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.emgcloud.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/123456"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.emgcloud.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8104"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.emgcloud.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8104\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8105,"href":"https:\/\/news.emgcloud.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8104\/revisions\/8105"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.emgcloud.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7965"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.emgcloud.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8104"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.emgcloud.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8104"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.emgcloud.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8104"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}