RV, Camper & Trailer Solar in Alberta

What the System Has to Power

We build the design around a real load model for a typical 20 to 30 foot Alberta travel trailer: a propane fridge with a 12 volt board, the propane furnace blower, the water pump, LED lights, phones and laptops, a TV, and a microwave and coffee maker used for a few minutes. Add it all up and a typical day draws about 1,250 watt-hours from the battery. A light user is closer to 1.0 kWh a day, a heavy user about 1.62 kWh. Those three numbers are what move you up or down a tier.

The microwave draws about 1,400 watts while it runs and nothing else large runs at the same instant, so a 2,000 watt pure-sine inverter covers the first two tiers. Tier 3 steps up to 3,000 watts for the headroom to run two things at once.

Three Tiers, Sized to How You Camp

Each tier is a real hourly simulation against southern Alberta summer weather, not a catalogue guess. Installed prices below include the lithium battery, which most branded kits leave out. We reconcile the exact number to your rig.

For comparison, Calgary RV solar shops advertise panel-and-electronics kits from roughly $1,380 to $2,700 and larger inverter packages up to about $6,470, and most of those do not include a battery. Our installed prices land mid-pack once the battery and the fitting are counted.

Running the Air Conditioning (Option 4)

A rooftop RV air conditioner is a different scale of load, about 1,500 watts while it runs, and it deserves an honest answer. No trailer-sized solar array can replace it day after day. The way it actually works is this: you run the air conditioner off a large lithium battery for the hours you want on a hot afternoon, and you recover the battery with shore power, a small generator, or by driving. Solar is a helper here, not the source. A 600 watt roof array returns about 2.1 kWh on an average southern Alberta summer day, and six hours of rooftop A/C is 8.5 kWh, so the panels replace roughly a quarter of one day of cooling.

So Option 4 is built around the battery and a 3,000 watt inverter with a soft-start that lets it start the compressor. Each battery below is sized to run its air conditioner for one hot afternoon and finish the day. To run the A/C for several days in a row you run it on shore power or a generator during the hot hours, which is the cheapest and most practical route, and the battery then only carries the fridge, lights and the evening.

There is a quieter alternative. A DC inverter air conditioner draws about half the power of a rooftop unit, needs no large inverter and has no start surge, so the same battery carries it through a hot two or three day trip in our simulation with room to spare. It cools a smaller area than a 13,500 BTU rooftop unit, and it costs more per unit, but it is the honest choice if you want air conditioning that runs off the battery.

Added load is on top of the roughly 1.25 kWh per day camping base. The 6 hour build is fully sourced today at 12 volts; the 4 and 8 hour prices scale with battery size and are approximate. At this size a 48 volt battery is the better engineering choice and we would build the larger ones that way. If the trailer already has a rooftop air conditioner, remove that line and the price drops by about $1,575. Prices are Canadian dollars, installed, GST included, and are confirmed before any order.

The Rainy-Day Question: Money vs Hardware

Three grey days in a row are the real test. On the worst three consecutive days in the weather record a panel makes only about 130 watt-hours a day per 100 watts of array, which is almost nothing. There are three honest ways to cover that, cheapest first.

The Equipment and Why

Frequently Asked Questions

More Off-Grid Solutions

Get Your Rig Off the Post

Book a free 15-minute design review. We match you to a tier, size it to your rig, and quote it. Typical installs run two to six weeks out.