Measured FWC power use

[PaulT]

Mulehawk,
Really nice meeting you guys in Lake Louise. We stayed in overflow parking in Jasper Wapiti campground with electric hookup for one night to get fully charged. Drove to Kamloops today and it rained most of the way. Full sun in Kamloops. Saw 12.5amps for 1 1/2 hrs as we ate lunch. Continued on to Kelowna in mostly rain. Stopped for night in Fintry provincial park with showers. Clouds disappeared about 05:00 pm. Clear sky not all that helpful in evening. Hope tomorrow will be bright day.

Nice to have cheap Acurite indoor/outdoor thermometer with outdoor sensor in fridge. Helps to know why the fridge seems to be running so much and to keep the temp in safe region. https://www.acurite.com/digital-indoor-outdoor-thermometer-with-clock-00415-00416-00417-00418.html
Can now adjust temp to a little higher temp for a while if battery is getting low. Sleep better ar night.

Paul

 

[MuleHawk]

Hey Paul!

Thanks for the link, I will have to pick one of those up, it would be nice to monitor the fridge temp from the truck. It was great meeting you and your wife, thanks for all the info you gave us!


www.mulehawk.com

 

[Stalking Light]

I have one of these cheapies velcroed to my fridge. Pretty inexpensive peace of mind.

 

[pawleyk]

I made up a spreadsheet the other day calculating estimated power usage and solar needs.

Our 90w portable just wasn't enough to run the fridge, plus a couple laptops. Especially on hot days. I ended up installing a 300w panel on the roof here in Belize.

Not sure if anybody could use the simple calculator I made or not, but figured I'd share it. This thread was tons of help in figuring out what to test and as a benchmark to see if I was coming in close.

I disconnected everything in the camper, then used my DMM to test draw as I turned on/reconnected each in turn. Throw the current draw into column B, and then your estimated (or measured) active run time in hours per day into column C.

Throw solar hours for your region in the box and you should get an estimate of the required wattage to service the load. The wattage number assumes 100% efficiency however, so add some for good measure.

Definitely not perfect, but seems to do the trick.

 

[RC Pilot Jim]

Adding my experience.
On this last trip to the hot springs besides the compressor fridge, lights and occasional fan I brought my iPAD as I was reading an e-book. Checking the Trimetric it draws point 5 or half an amp. As the week progressed I noticed the camper battery was NOT topping off each day. Upon checling I noticed that when I plugged the ipad into the inverter the iPAD turned on which meant charging took hours maybe 6 or more as the ipad battery was running the operating system and charging the battery.

That additional charging was slowly reducing the start percentage of full when it was dark affecting the range from Day 1-100% of charge to 87%. By Day 6 had the range down to 91% - 77%. Playing with ipad I finally realized user leaves ipad on then plugs in the charger than switches off. Charger then charges battery in 2-3 hours while topping off my one camper battery back to 100% .

When I returned home I put camper battery back on the charger/maintainer trickle charger with no load and within 36 hours the battery was back to 100%. Sitting in the carport the suns reflection off my neighbors white roof easily keeps the bat charged to full.

Without the Trimetric it would be impossible to troubleshoot developing problems.