Part 3-RV Solar- Energy Audit

[Music] [Applause] in our last episode batteries and monitors we briefly touched upon the importance of an energy audit I've had a lot of questions about how do I complete a energy audit so today that's exactly what we're going to do we're going to go through a detailed energy audit stay tuned the audits sheet that we're going to be using today comes completed with some of the most common appliances and their load draw you'll notice on this piece of paper that lights and 12-volt appliances are at the top and 120 volt appliances are at the bottom we'll go through this item by item you can download this page from our website and I'll also put a link to it at the end of this video we'll start with lights first the halogen lights a lot of those puck lights you have may be halogen so count those those are twenty watts each next is the fluorescent tubes and finally the LEDs hopefully most of you have changed out all your incandescent bulbs to LEDs I personally have two fluorescent tube fixtures at 40 watts each and I run those for about two hours a day each so in this example that would be two times 40 watts would be 80 watts times two hours would be a hundred and sixty watt hours per day for the fluorescent tubes I also have 10 LED fixtures at five watts each then those run probably three hours a day so that would be 10 times 5 is 50 times 3 would be a total of a hundred and 50 watt hours per day moving moving on down we come to the 12-volt appliances starting with fantastic fans that pull 40 watts each when they're running water pump it's a pretty good load it's 85 watts when it's running but how long does a water pump actually run if you think about that most water pumps are for RVs are rated at three gallons per minute if you run them for very long you'll run out of fresh water so I would get venture a guest that the water pump probably only runs six to seven minutes a day in most applications so let's say on the outside that you actually run your pump for twelve minutes a day that'd be point two hours at 85 watts would still only be 17 watt hours per day moving down the next one is a furnace fan again they pull a fairly high power rating at 90 watts and those do run in the winter time about 50% of the time so an eight-hour night that'd be the fan would be running for hours so they'd be 360 watt hours per day composting toilet fan it's one of those things that runs 24 hours a day and runs about 20 watts so if you have a composting toilet don't forget to account for that the last thing on our appliance is for the 12-volt side is what we call phantom drawers those things that you don't think about you can't turn them off you're not in control of them things like Control board's that are constantly monitoring temperatures in your water heater your thermostats back lights clocks and your safety alarms your co2 detector carbon monoxide and fire detectors all of those are drawing 24/7 I usually put in 30 watts for those running 24 hours a day or 720 watt hours of phantom loads so let's not forget those now let's take a look at the hundred and twenty volt appliances which if you have those and you're gonna be boondocking you're running off of an inverter the inverter itself has a what we call an idle draw just because it's on it's pulling about 30 Watts 24 hours a day so that's seven hundred and twenty ones just for having an inverter that is gone power our flat-screen tvs satellite receivers blu-ray players so forth like that in my personal experience I watch TV in the evenings and we probably watched five hours a day so that's the TV and the satellite receiver five hours a day so the TV would be three hundred five hours times 60 watts and the satellite receiver would be another what is that five times thirty five watts then the coffeemaker we use a cure egg so it doesn't run for very long probably three minutes a day at 1200 watts though so that's sixty watt hours per day microwave probably run that for 10 to 12 minutes a day so we'll call it 12 minutes or 300 watt hours per day and then other things that you need to consider their own here you can do this for yourself hair dryers 1200 watts probably don't run them but three to four minutes insta pot that's a thousand watt draw and those may run for a while so that's something you need to be aware of laptops 50 Watts desktop computers 170 Watts air conditioner if you're gonna try to run air conditioning off of your solar or your inverter that's 1800 watts per hour water heaters I just don't recommend that's 1500 watts and you really have very little control over how often that run residential refrigerator big energy hog 200 watts and they probably run ten hours out of 24 so you're looking at close to 2000 watt hours per day any way you do this add it all up your watt hours and then divide by 12 and a half which is this kind of standing voltage of your battery and figure out how many amp hours you have or using after we figure that we'll talk about how to convert that into battery bank okay so when I add all mine up I get 30 162 watt hours per day divided by 12.5 volts gives me 253 amp hours that I'm going to use each day so since I can only run my battery bank down to 50% because I'm using AGM batteries I need to have twice that amount so I need close to 500 amp hours of battery bank to support my usage if I'm using lithium batteries I can get what get away with a little less I could probably get away with 300 amp hours but if you're using lead acid or a GM's you need twice your aid your amp hour daily draw in batteries and then will support that with solar thanks for watching today we hope you found this video helpful if so be sure and give us a thumbs up subscribe to our Channel and don't forget to hit that Bell notification so you don't miss any future videos

Channel: Boondocking with Solar

Views: 484

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: RV, Solar, Electricity, Boondocking, energy audit

Id: Emljl7Z91QA

Length: 9min 15sec (555 seconds)

Published: Sun May 17 2020