We’re Eventually Going To Get New Solar Panels But Our Generator Has Been Working Well
The decreased sense of urgency to replace our stolen solar panels
Solar energy is definitely how we initially decided to power our rig. Our mobile tiny home is definitely cozy and has all of the amenities we need and solar energy was definitely going to be our cheapest option. Gas, after all, is $4.37 a gallon and the sun is free minus the initial investment of buying the solar panels.
So, we had six 12-volt monocrystalline solar panels stolen on a camping trip that we had been on almost two months ago now. We had those solar panels for three years. Those solar panels were 100 watts apiece. That generated 600 watts. That was a lot for us. Our old generator generated 60 amps and produced a little bit more than our solar panels did at about 768 watts.
How our current power generator is meeting our current needs
Our current generator generates 120 amps. If you multiply that by 12.8, that converts to 1536 watts. We’re getting more than 2.5 times the energy production out of our generator in an hour now than with our old solar panels and about 2 times the energy production than our old generator.
Sure, solar may be cleaner energy and definitely cheaper and more sustainable in the long run, but since our tank holds 3.7 gallons of gas and runs from anywhere between 12–20 hours every time we run it, we have decided that it would be easier to just depend on our generator right now.
Technically, we could replace them with used solar panels that we could buy from a commercial resaler and we don’t have to buy the same size. We could go even bigger and then run both the solar panels to the solar charge controller and the gas generator to our new automatic transfer switch wired to the main breaker.
This will directly charge our seven LiFePo4 batteries coming at 17KW hours. This has shown in the past to be enough power to run us without charging for three days and that was with running our air conditioner, oven, television, refrigerator, computers, and my sleep apnea machine all in our mobile tiny home.
Weighing the new cost and considering our next location for options
This has been very encouraging for us because we’re getting better optimization out of our energy needs than we had expected. In the summertime though, having extra solar energy would definitely alleviate the need for us to have to use our power generator as much.
If we were in a sunnier location than Erie, which is our goal, then we could depend solely on the sun, for the most part, only needing to run the generator when we want to use a decent amount of energy to cook and to run the air conditioner.
We’ve definitely looked at a few places south of Erie with more sun coverage and most places south, including places like Pittsburgh and Cleveland definitely get more sun to where it makes a difference. Those places also have more options to look for resellers so we still have that option if we run into a situation where we’ll absolutely need the energy generation.
Again, losing $600 worth of solar panels wasn’t ideal and it kept us from leaving for our original destination to Chicago after our camping trip. We now have adapted to this and then once our old power generator died out, we were lucky enough to find a sale at Harbor Freight and buy the newest model inverter generator perfect for our situation. We definitely have an interesting situation with our power now.
Our not so urgent dilemma and no urgency to do the labor to reinstall new solar panels
We’re not really in a dilemma. It’s more like do we want to repurchase used solar panels right now, do all the work of climbing back up to the top of our 11 foot tall mobile tiny home and reinstall the panels and wire everything up, and then secure it better so that they would be harder to steal.
Installing those panels the first time around was taxing enough physically for my partner. We’re not necessarily in any hurry to get them back up for a second time. Each solar panel weighed about 30 pounds so if we stuck to the original ones, we’d end up lifting 180 pounds up 11 feet on a ladder while both of us aren’t in the best physical condition.
We’re going to make sure when we do get new ones, no one’s getting to them
Who knows? Someone may also try to steal the new ones, although we do have enough security and we just replaced our DVR with a new internet-connected one that can also record to our phones and we can see stuff in real-time on the app even when we’re away. Somebody would be looking for trouble if they tried to steal our main energy source again.
We would have them on camera and most likely if we were awake, they wouldn’t feel very pleasant after attempting to steal from us yet again. For now, even though we’re still considering the purchase before winter, we have decided that it’s not a priority to replace the panels and that we can continue to depend on our new and improved generator.
Here are the two stories about the old generator dying and the impact of the new power generator.
