Monday, June 4, 2012

Solar performance update

         Finally we are getting to the end stretch of the project. I am planning to get finished with "OverTheTop" this month and go on a little "test" road trip with an old friend around the first of July to maybe the 10th of July. I will be trying to put on most of the major finishing touches in the next few weeks. So far I am really surprised at how little power all my appliances are using. At the most it looks like I will be using about 100 amp hours per day. I am slowly switching the system from AC over to the DC. Most of the usage I assume we'll be the little mini ARB 63Q fridge that you see in the top picture.  That amount of power  that it uses depends greatly on the exterior daytime temperature. The factory test setting has it set at about 45 degrees F and they tell you that it uses .7 to 2.3 amp hours. I have my unit set much colder down to 23 - 25° F, therefore it also uses more power I would guess at around 3.5 AH. That setting seams to keep the inside just below 30 deg, it allows my frozen stuff to stay frozen & the other stuff to stay cold. That setting is the sweet spot for me, it works both as a freezer and as a refrigerator.



This ARB cooler runs supper quiet & efficient, however at a premium price $950
I have this unit running now for 12 months  non stop 24/7.
Actually during the day when its the hottest - it gets the power directly from
the Outback Flex 80 charge controller 


Here you can see my daily usage, since the TV only uses 30 watts & 
my LED lights only use 10-15 watts, I will be using less then 100 AH daily,
my solar panels can put out 300+ AH on a sunny day
on cloudy days they still produce about 50-100 AH

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