The all-important resource, second only to water, battery power. Unlike RVing at your local RV park, Boondocking forces you to live off your own resources. Power is the one resource easily abused and easily fixed by spending thousands. I’m too cheap to spend thousands, so I am making due with what I have; A single deep-cycle battery and 30-watts (2Amp) of solar panels mounted on top of van. This whole package, if purchased brand new, is less than $300.
The battery is rated at 125 Amp Hours. So, in theory, 125 hours of use at a single Amp use. Realistically, you cut that number in half as you never want to drain below 50% battery. So, simple math says 60 Hours of use at 1-Amp usage.
So how much is 1Amp? The easiest answer without going into all the math; Every 12watts your appliance uses equals 1Amp. So, a TV that consumes 50watts of power, is using 4.17Amps of my 60Amp budget if used for a whole hour. My laptop, when charging and powered up consumes 60-70 watts (5-6Amps) per hour. In theory, I could operate my laptop for 10 hours before my battery reaches 50% power and time for me to get to a wall outlet to charge up.
Lets not forget the Inverter that I use to power my 120v appliances. It is a massive 1000watt inverter (I bought it to power the microwave if needed) and consumes a whopping 0.6Amp per hour without anything plugged into it. I have since purchased two much smaller 100 watt inverters for when I do not need to be powering anything more than my laptop or charging my flashlight batteries. 0.6Amp is a lot of waste to charge some batteries, though having the large inverter has its pluses at times. Needless to say, I keep my large inverter off as much as possible and use the 100w inverters as they consume only 0.15A.
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download: Battery Amp Hour and Solar charge calculator (24.57KB) added: 13/06/2011 clicks: 98 description: An excel spreadsheet that I developed to help me determine my battery usage and potential solar re-charge while living 'off the grid' in my camping adventures. |
