Solar Stuff...

[Grant H.]

That would have enough power for the night? couple lights, might add small tv and dvd player, watch a movie, charge phones and tablets.

This is all subjective on the draw that these devices have.

I don't know about adding a TV and a dvd player. For LED lights and charging phones and tablets, I'd say you'd be alright. Especially if you charge the phones during the day. I'd just watch the movies on the phones/tablets.

TV's are power hungry pigs (relatively). I agree with Irving on using the tablets/phones for watching a movie while camping.

You also have to consider the losses incurred by running an inverter to create 120VAC to run your TV, DVD Player, Etc.

Charging phones and tablets during the day, when you are likely to have an excess of solar, is a great plan.

True....i might go 2 100 w panels and 2 deep cycle batteries. Expandable to 3 panels maybe over kill. Forgot to mention CPAP machine is a must. Go though on tablet regarding movies. thats what we did last trip with power banks for all.

The size of your system depends on the space and weight you are willing to put into it, and the power that you need to use.

Your CPAP Machine should have a current spec on it's power supply (look for input voltage and current ratings on it - something like 120-240VAC @ .5A (random numbers)). Figure out how much power that wants, add in charging 2-4 phones at ~3AH/ea, 2-4 tablets at ~6AH/ea and you can start to build a power budget, and then spec your batteries and your panels to support your wants.


Once you get all that started you also need to think about if you want to be able to go a day or two without any usable sun (camped in the shade of trees, cloudy rainy weather, etc), and then you get into scaling your batteries and solar for surviving multiple days and how long does it take to recover when you do get back to sun?