Hi there,
I have a van that I am building out and trying to straighten some things out in my system as I design for kitchen.
The basics:
- I have 400W of solar on roof.
- I have 200ah Lithium Ion in battery bank. (I ran some calcs early on and was looking at ~180ah of use per day, so 200ah seemed doable. I left a space open to drop in another if needed.)
- I have the 3000W 12 V MultiPlus Inverter Charger. (Some of my calculated items pulled a good bit of wattage (hot water kettle=1k W, induction stove ~1-1.8k W) so I figured Ok lets do the 3k W.)
I am hitting a lot of points where the inverter just won't budge though. Sometimes I'll be at a good charge say 75 - 80% of capacity and the inverter light will switch to "low battery" when I turn on the 1k watt hot water kettle. Really, at 1kW? No go. If I start the car, the kettle works. I haven't even bought the induction stove yet since I'm running into these issues.
I saw somewhere that potentially I would need at least 3 x 100ah batteries just to give enough current to the 3K W Inverter to do its thing. Is that right??
I'm hesitant to drop another $1k on a battery, although I would do it if it let me run my whole setup with the induction stove smoothly. It starts to worry me though that maybe I couldn't fill the 300ah battery bank fully with only 400W of solar. I've heard good rule of thumb is 200W solar per 100ah battery charge. I have enough room on the roof for another 50V panel..maaaybe 100W. So I'd be at 450W-500W, not the ideal 2:1 ratio. I do have an Orion that charges while I drive... so there is that. I would hardly ever be parked anywhere for days on end without moving. This is mostly a family extended trip mobile. Going for several days up to 2 months at a time remote work/travel trips. I also have a shore power hookup but don't plan on relying on that for steady refill, more of an emergency backup thing if in a pinch.
The other option would be to just swap out the 3k W inverter charger for the smaller 2k W inverter charger - if that is in fact a more appropriate current draw on 200ah batteries- not buy another battery, and just go propane setup for the kitchen stove instead of the induction stove. Thoughts? What say ye?
Recap:
- Could my 3kW inverter charger (and solar setup) function smoothly with an additional 100ah battery and be able to supply for induction stove? Or
- Cutting it too close and best to go to 2k W inverter charger + propane setup?