These tables for current draw and how to calculate battery life will help you manage your energy use, especially if you intend to boondock.
NOTE: This is a guide. NuCamp may use different appliances in different production runs. Your appliances may be a little different, but these numbers will be close enough to estimate battery life. From this table you should be able identify the energy hogs if you are boondocking and act accordingly. | ||
Appliance | Current Draw | Notes |
Alde Heating Element 1 (1kW) | 8.3 amps | Uses 120V AC; converted to 12V equivalent |
Alde Heating Element 2 (1kW) | 8.3 amps | Second heating stage (selectable) |
Alde Circulation Pump | 1.2 amps | 12V DC pump |
Truma Aventa A/C (Cool Mode) | 8.7 amps | Approximate draw for fan/compressor |
Roof Fan (Max setting) | 5.0 amps | Max setting draw |
Refrigerator (12V compressor) | 2.6 amps | Runs continuously on DC |
Water Pump | 2.2 amps | While in use. |
TV (12V, 24") | 1.5 amps | Varies by screen brightness |
Stereo / Media Center | 0.15 amps | When powered on |
Interior LED Lights (3 total) | 1.2 amps | 0.4 amps per light |
Parasitic Standby (avg) | 0.5 amps | Shunt, control boards, etc. |
As a side note, the Truma AC unit will not run on batteries with the Black Canyon. For the AC to run on batteries, you must have the Black Canyon with the Lithium Upgrade, which features a 270 amp-hour battery and a 3,000 watt inverter. If you have the Black Canyon without the Lithium Upgrade, do not include the AC in your calculations, as you can’t use it.
You will need your calculator for this.
First, select all of the appliances you are going to use.
Add up the amperage of each one to get a total Current Draw. Let’s say we are going to use the AC (8.7 amps) and the TV (2.6 amps), our total current draw is 11.6 amps at 120v.
Even though we are using an inverter, we are still drawing current from a 12V battery, so we need to convert the 120V amps to 12V amps.
First, we have to convert amps to watts
Watts = 120 x 11.6 = 1392 watts
Now watts to DC amps.
1392 / 12 = 116 DC amps.
Let’s add in the inverter inefficiency of 10%
116 / 0.90 = 128 amps
Let’s presume we have a 12V 270 amp-hour battery. (Black Canyon with Lithium Upgrade. Black Canyon is 12V 100 amp hour.) We know that with a lead-acid battery, we should not discharge the battery more than 50% to prevent deep discharge. That’s not true with the new Battle Borne type Lithium batteries. You can discharge to 0% if you want to. You can pick your number, but let’s stay with 50% in this example.
270 / 2 – 135 amp-hour usable charge.
Now we can calculate the run time of the appliances we chose.
135 / 128 = 1.05 hours of run time.
During the day, with the solar panels in full sun, you will get a bit longer time, but as both panels together are only 380 watts, it won’t make a big difference.
Note that the refrigerator runs on 12V at 2.6 amps, so you can use that amperage in your calculation without converting it to DC amps.
You can put your calculator away now and feel a little depressed. Sorry about that.