Not sure what I need.........

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sunnyslife

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Hell no.Forget the heater and you are going to need at least 3oo watts and a back up genny for the other stuff.
 
I'm sorry Barbara, but at most, that might be enough to recharge your cell phone and laptop.

It won't put enough amp hours into a battery to let you run a refrigerator.  You're going to need a bigger system to do that.

And electric heat ( or air conditioning )  is just not doable on solar - you would need to cover your vehicle with solar panels and fill it with a ton of batteries.

Regards
John
 
I'm afraid they're right, solar can't power heaters but a propane heater will work just fine and be fairly cheap. If it's a 110 volt refrigerator it's not practical either without a lot of solar.

But solar will still make your life a lot better but the Sunforce isn't a good system at all, don't get it. Much better to go to Amazon and buy a Renogy kit. If you can install it the cheapest is either a 100 watt or 200 watt kit. If you want it portable then I highly recommend their 100 watt suitcase, it's 1000 times better than that Sunforce.

Buy this one, it's just a little more and far, far better:
http://www.amazon.com/Renogy-Foldable-Suitcase-Battery-Charger/dp/B00HR8YNK6/

Bob
 
as far as the heater is concerned, no. what refrigerator are we talking? I run my 2 engel refrigerators off 2 marine batteries and 2 80 watt panels. with occasional cell phone and lap top charging. my batts are tied into my vehicle charging system and I also have a 15 watt maintainer panel hooked into the system. bob had some good advice on the renology system. highdesertranger
 
If you were hoping of powering things directly off of the solar panels, well it is better to think of the solar panel as a battery charger and the batteries as being the power source.


Portable fridge I hope means it is a 12volt, perhaps AC/DC chest style fridge??
For seeing how much battery and solar you need to refill that battery.

Expect one of these to consume about 1 AH per hour under 80F.  Best case scenario is a little less than half this.

Expect a laptop to consume 3 to 4 AH per hour, but upto 7 to 8 amps at times if a powerful laptop editing videos.
Recharging the cell phone from dead consumes about 0.5 AH of battery capacity.

Not sure about the printer's consumption.  A printer 'might' require a Pure sine wave inverter as opposed to a modified sine wave inverter which are less expensive

If you look on the power bricks provided with laptop and printer, there will be an output voltage and amperage and possibly wattage ratings
These are the maximum levels of electricity these devices can demand, not necessarily the amount they will demand at all times.

See if your laptop has a Car Adapter power supply.  These are much more efficient than having an inverter power the provided power brick.

The printer will likely have some DC voltage input as well from a provided power supply, and technically a DC to DC adapter can be found and then it need not require an inverter.

A hundred watts of solar should not feed more than 100 amp  hours of battery capacity, ideally, if solar is to be the only recharging source.  Ultimately, battery longevity  will suffer to some degree if too little solar regularly has to feed too much battery, each and every day.
You've got to add up all the expected loads consumption and  then have enough solar wattage to replace what was used, and another 10% or so to account for inefficiencies
Expect 130 watts of solar to return about 62 AH in summer on a good sunny day.

You do not want to take more than 50AH from a 100AH capacity battery

If one gets to use grid power to power a regular battery charger every so often, then the battery's will have extended longevity and the solar/capacity ratio can be lower.
If one utilizes the alternator and a thick copper path from alternator to house battery, then relatively short drives can bring a depleted battery to 80% state of charge fairly quickly, but that last 20% takes no less than 4 hours no matter what charging source is used.

I happen to run a laptop several hours a day, A TV for a few hours, a 1.8 cubic foot front loading fridge, several fans running each and every day off of 198 watts of solar, and I have 130 AH of battery exclusively to power these things. It is more than enough Solar in summer,  but not quite enough in winter.  

As other said, you got to forget about the heating electrically.  At the most, a 50 watt heating pad set on low should be the most you can expect from a  single large 12v lead acid battery to keep you warm overnight.  

More solar will always be better, if you have more than needed, the battery is just that much happier and lasts that much longer, and you have a bigger buffer for cloudy days.

For maximum battery longevity any charging source available should be used whenever possible to return the battery(s) to as high a rate of charge, as this is where lead acid batteries would choose to live their whole life if it was up to them. 100% charged all the time.

But they are just batteries and are rented.  Poorly treated batteries 'might' last 200 cycles. well treated 500 cycles, and if a true deep cycle battery like golf cart batteries, well treated, expect 1000 or more cycles
 
Thank you all for your responses - though I have to admit, science was never meant for me and I am so confused - even more so now - LOL - well, maybe my husband understands more about it than me - all I do know for sure is that due to my health and need to keep meds cold, I have to have a fridge and since I will be where there is no electric available more than not, I have to get this figured out.......ey, ey, ey!
 
The problem is easily solved, but it depends n your budget. Tell us what you can spend and we can go from there.
Bob
 
Could you keep your meds cold in a thermos with some free ice from a self serve soda station at a fast food restaurant? Obviously a thermos wouldn't be the most ideal solution, but even if you had a better method a thermos or two could be a good backup if a solar electric system failed.

Hank
 
My energy star 5cuft chest freezer converted to run at 28 degrees does a fine job and only uses 10w an hour. The heater is a no go but the rest of it you can do with a few hundred watts of solar.
 
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