GORV - Digital Magazine Issue #42 | Page 24

RV FEATURE It’s time to add up all that power usage. You’ll find by the time everyone wakes up the next morning, in the order of 140Ah has been drained from the van’s batteries! Admittedly, this scenario doesn’t take into account any charging that may happen after you initially pull up. What it does show is that whatever charging system you have for freecamping, be it solar or generator, you now know how many amp hours you’re going to have to generate and feed back into those batteries before everyone goes back to bed the next day. You'd be surprised by how much power is required to recharge laptops. Next month, we will look more closely at solar power and discover just how difficult it can be for it to keep up with your 12V power requirements.