Upgrade existing panels to power fridge and TV in beach hut?

[dcrane82]

I'm looking for advise on what equipment and panels I would need to power LED light small TV/laptop and fridge in a small beach hut on the south coast. At the moment we have one panel charging two lorry style batteries. However this does not seem to regulate the power very well and after a couple of hours the current lights (caravan style) start to dim and the TV works intermittently. Is there a unit that I need to have inbetween the batteries and electrical equipment to regulate the power? Also I think panel technology has come a long way in 10 years so a panel upgrade is probably needed if someone could point me in the right direction to suppliers and such for this little project that would be great. Thanks in advance, D.

[martin]

Get a caravan-type bottled gas 'fridge (electric fridges consume gobbets of power, which is expensive to capture and store), OR go for simple evaporation cooling, OR do without a 'fridge all together..........
"Do the sums first" - work out how much power you'll use in a typical day, then size the battery bank and the panels to input the energy, THEN you won't have problems!

[Justme]

Your fridge could be using over 50ah per day.
Or to put it in terms of panel size, all the power that 600watt of array can make in winter or 100 watts in high summer.
It sounds more like a lack of power not excess power.

It also sounds like your bats are nearing their demise.

What voltage are you seeing before during & after charging & when it starts to play up?

[biff]

hi d.
  martin is right about the gas fridge,i would have had good power input but when wind and solar became scarse i had to fiddle about with a generator to keep the food in the fridge from going off,so the fridge is really a 24/7 energy gulper. my wife went online and looked up gas fridges.we settled for a 3 way waeco 65ltr job,we keep it on the gas all the time with only the little pilot lit,but on the 220ac from our turbine or solar.then when the wind and solar refuse to perform we just knock of the lecky switch and turn up the gas.its an exellent setup. it also comes with a 12 volt input also but we discovered this option eats the juice. the fridge was £365.00,delivered here to ireland,,,expensive, but it cured our problem.
                                                                      biff