Post by gary350 on Dec 2, 2015 6:53:32 GMT -8
We like to camp in national parks, they have no electricity. We bought stick up LED battery lights for the camper walls. I have a 750 amp car battery and a 100 watt DC to AC inverter from Harbor Freight. We use a string of Christmas tree lights around the camp site for light. I change the light bulbs inside the camper to smaller 25 watt and 15 watt bulbs and connect 120 volts inverter to the camper. Summer days are long we don't use the lights more than 2 hours but winter days are short we try to not use lights more than 4 hours. The car battery will last 7 to 10 days with no charge only if I disconnect the DC/AC inverter from the battery when it is not being used. The inverter will run the battery dead even when the switch is turned off, be sure to disconnect it from the battery when not using it. I have 9 solar panels from Harbor Freight they are worthless if we camp where there are shade trees. All the national parks have trees and shade except Arizona, Utah, NM, NV and southern Colorado Solar works good in the desert if there are no clouds. Even if you find a sunny spot in a forest for solar panels you need to be there all day to keep moving the panels into the sun because the sun moves all day. If your in tall trees you only get sun from about 10 am to 5 pm. I leave my solar panels home unless I know we are going some place where we can use them but if we are camping less than 10 days I still don't need the solar panels we only use the car battery for lights. We don't have any 12 volts lights in our camper. We never used 12 volt lights in any of our other campers. It is so much easier for us to have only 1 power system, 120 volts and 1 set of light bulbs all 120 volts. Our LED lights take the place of the old 12 volt system.
