I have been peaking through the Carmanah website looking at their solar-system offerings and I am fairly impressed with what I am seeing. Lots of choices and the ability to mix / match to meet my needs. Their main-site is at: Carmanah - We put solar to work. Carmanah.com I started looking at their site because of their RV stuff. Their "Solar Elite and Weekender" will allow you to run 110v equipment directly from the solar panels (given sufficient light). They also have ""solar charging systems" that you connect to your battery-back-up systems (deep-cycle) to power everything in a 12-volt world. For my little tent-trailer, the solar-charging-systems with dual 6-volt deep-cycle batteries would probably be more than enough to keep me happy for an entire summer of camping without needing to bring my gen-set along. Does anyone here have the Camanah solar stuff - and - if so - any problems with it (either self-inflicted or design) and what have you done to rectify the issues? When I build my "off-the-grid" house, my plan is to use the "full-time RV solar systems" (Elite) to run the house (which is planned to live on 12-volt primarily, not 110v).
They have nice stuff; I looked at them last year when I was doing off grid instrumentation, but went elsewhere for cost reasons. Yes, you can run anything off panels (with an inverter and without a battery), if you have enough wattage on your panels, but with a small system like that you could easily use more in a burst of power than your panels provide. I think your rv system is a better idea. Shop around and compare prices and capabilities - there are lots of places that offer brand name components relatively cheaply online. Happy Camping!
My trailer is now setup to run on a single 80 watt panel and dual 6-volt batteries. Initial testing tells me that it is working very well running all the electrical stuff without issues. My next step is to hard-wire a small inverter and several power-ports into my trailer (was not delivered with 12-volt power-ports, only 120volt) to make it that much more functional. I am slowly learning the skills to wire-up a full house w/ 12-volt by modifying my trailer. I am excited to change-over to a system that I will no longer need to rely on power-transmission.
