Have you asked them how much the whole set-up weighs??? And the fridge would add to the van weight too.

Seems a bit overkill to me to ma but it was set up like that when he purchased it. The weight of the van is 3000kg, my main concern would be weight of the panels on the supporting structure. This chap and his wife have towed it up north for the dry and then south for the summer for the last 3 years. They sell lavander products at markets etc
cheers
blaze

A friend of our is doing up a large bus and has a system like that... but they wants to travel around according to work and take normal sized gear with them so they figured they'd need lots of power....

WOW now that is a BIG system, I really think that if our Government were really worried about the environment all new houses being built should be equipped with solar, I do think it is the sensible way to go, that is until we again have 40 days and 40 nights of rain, then we will all be in deep sh..t.

Can't entirely disagree with the "overkill" comments. Would have cost mega dollars, and what for? To be able to boil an electric jug? To run fridges that are only half as efficient (litre for litre) as 12v units. Seems they may have given a lot of thought to the supply side of the equation and somewhat less to the demand side. At least the current owners didn't part with all that "hard-earned".

The previous owners did know what they were doing or were well advised when they selected two volt cells instead of trying to build up their battery capacity by cobbling a number of normal batteries together. Those cells usually have a long lifespan.

Did you count the cells to see whether they were running a 12v or 24v system? Charging a 12v battery bank of that size from a car's alternator would be a big ask.

-- Edited by jimricho on Sunday 30th of October 2011 06:43:04 PM