Thread: 12V setup for camper trailer.

A 400 watt inverter won't run a hair dryer or kettle. A 2000 watt version barely would, and if you go to something that big, remember they will draw nearly 170 amps at 12 volts when running at full load like they would be if your running a kettle or hair drier. That would flatten your battery in short order if you only have 100AH to play with.

Tell your other half to leave those things at home and stick with the 400 watt unit. You will need a 35 to 40 amp supply for that.

Apart from that a 100AH deep cycle and a 120 watt solar panel will run your fridge, lighting and chargers fine - that's what I have and I never go short on power.

Hairdryer and kettle aside, what should i be starting with ? Some kind of switch panel with circuit breaker and a couple of fused cigi and USB sockets in 2 locations.

12v setups depend on what sort of camping and for how long you want to go being self sufficient. These things depict battery sizes, solar panel etc

Originally Posted by loanrangie

Hairdryer and kettle aside, what should i be starting with ? Some kind of switch panel with circuit breaker and a couple of fused cigi and USB sockets in 2 locations.

Yep, that's a good start. As pretty much everything these days charges off a USB outlet, make sure you have plenty so everyone's not fighting over them. 2 in each location at least. If you're not up to making your own panel up, there are some good ones on the market that are as easy as wiring them to your battery. Mount the reg for your solar panel close to the battery - don't leave it on the panel. Have a set of connectors to hook your solar up in an easy to get to location that gives you some flexibility in where you can place your panel - on either side of your trailer. If your trailer has a flat surface on top of it, design it so the solar panel stores there and stays connected to the battery - it will always be fully charged when you head out.

Originally Posted by Doc130

12v setups depend on what sort of camping and for how long you want to go being self sufficient. These things depict battery sizes, solar panel etc

Very true. As an example I run a 120 watt panel, and a single 100 AH deep cycle battery. I run a 38 litre a Engel fridge and 2 strips of LED lights mainly. A small 12 volt pressure pump for water and a big floodlight (27 watt LED) which I use when setting up in the dark, or if there is a need for lots of light.

I can go away almost indefinitely with this setup. Even without the solar panel hooked up I can go 3 days just off the battery. My limiting factor is my fuel bill, not the amount of power I have.

Bicicat, to be honest I doubt you could camp indefinatley with that setup. Fair enough saying you can go three days without charge but if we really want to get all technical about 12v, without doing the calculations I would say you would have the battery well under 50% charge after three days which is not exactly what deep cycle batteries like. To give the ultimate setup for battery life you never want to let your deep cycle battery go below 50% charge at any point, ever! However, not many people think of this when designing their 12v system. Not knocking your setup at all coz it would work great, just thought it is worth mentioning. Personally when I think of indefinatley, you want to be able to go a week without sun or any sort of charge. This should cover almost all situations, if it was raining for that long I'm sure that you would probably pack it up and move on.

Originally Posted by Doc130

Bicicat, to be honest I doubt you could camp indefinatley with that setup. Fair enough saying you can go three days without charge but if we really want to get all technical about 12v, without doing the calculations I would say you would have the battery well under 50% charge after three days which is not exactly what deep cycle batteries like. To give the ultimate setup for battery life you never want to let your deep cycle battery go below 50% charge at any point, ever! However, not many people think of this when designing their 12v system. Not knocking your setup at all coz it would work great, just thought it is worth mentioning. Personally when I think of indefinatley, you want to be able to go a week without sun or any sort of charge. This should cover almost all situations, if it was raining for that long I'm sure that you would probably pack it up and move on.

Been out in it for weeks straight - never had an issue. Stayed in one spot many nights in a row - no issue. You are right about running it 3 days straight without charging it - it drags the battery down, and it isn't great for it - I only did it that time because I forgot my solar panel... That won't happen again as it permanently mounted now - not ideal, but still works fine.

Oh, and when I'm home from trips, I sometimes forget to plug the fridge back into 240 volts and just leave it on this system and I've had it go over a month and still had a couple of beers in there at zero degrees when I remembered to plug it in and the battery sitting on 12.7 volts - that was just recently coming out of a Victorian Winter. That's pretty much indefinitely in my book.

Oh, and I'm a Sparky by trade who specialises in DC control systems so I sort of understand what I'm up against.

Maybe in a Victorian winter, it must be close to zero anyway, but anywhere where the ambient temp is even above 25 degrees I don't believe you could run a engel fridge especially, for one month and on a 100ah battery and still have 12.7 volts. Engels aren't as good on current draw as people think. I've got a shunt setup which doesn't lie. I've run A few mates Engels of varying sizes for a test and my nation luna. Luna wins hands down!