How to choose an RV solar kit

Most “best solar kit” lists skip the two things that decide the answer: how much power you use and how much roof you have. Get those right and the kit almost picks itself.

The Megawatt solar calculator doesn’t crown a winner. It takes your daily watt-hours, divides by peak sun hours times a 0.75 system efficiency, and rounds up to whole packs of 200, 400, 800, or 1,180 watts. Those four packs are the only solar products this site links.

Start with the load

The calculator’s presets (luxury Class A, mid-size, compact) are planning figures James published, not a measurement of your coach. Treat them as a starting point and edit the boxes until they look like your trips.

Then look hard at the air conditioner box. Leave it checked only if you really plan to run AC from batteries, because no other setting moves the array size as much.

Measure the roof before you buy

Roofs lose space to air conditioners, vents, and antennas. The original calculator says so and tells you to verify the layout before you purchase anything.

The solar planner draws a roof from the length and width you enter. The panel size in that drawing is an editable planning size, not a number copied from a product listing.

Know what the 0.75 means

That factor comes straight from the published calculator. It stands in for heat, wiring, and controller losses, and it’s a planning margin rather than a promise of daily output.

For a week of real sky at your ZIP code, open the solar forecast. It reads Open-Meteo irradiance and applies the same factor.

The four packs

When to hire it out

If the array gets big, or the battery calculator steps you up to 24 or 48 volts, hire the work. The old Megawatt partners page lists one solar installer: CCRV (Cross Country RV Solar).

We don’t rank installers, and the installer page explains why.