At Outbax, we’ve spent the better part of a decade fielding questions about portable power for Australian campers. The one that comes up more than any other still arrives in roughly the same form: how much solar do you actually need? Not how solar panel works. Not whether mono is better than poly. Just the practical version—will the fridge last a long weekend at Mungo? Can a CPAP run reliably? Will the lights still be on by day three?
This guide is the answer we’d give a mate over a beer, written down. We’ll skip the textbook where it’s not useful, point you toward the gear we’d actually pack, and be upfront about where solar falls short. It’s based on real-world testing across conditions, from Cobar to Hobart to Darwin.
What Solar Actually Does for an Aussie Tourer
Solar is not magic free electricity. It is a top-up. Most caravanners use solar for three reasons, in this order: to keep the fridge cold for longer between powered sites, to avoid the $35 to $60 a night you pay for a powered van park, and to access free camps and national parks where generators are banned outright. NPWS in NSW, Parks Victoria, and DBCA in WA all restrict or prohibit petrol gennies in most of their estates. Solar is the only practical option if you want to spend a week at Cape Range, Wilpena Pound or Mungo without towing a noisy box behind you.
The other thing solar does, the bit nobody talks about until they have lived with it, is change how you camp. You park where you want to park, not where the power head is. You stay an extra day because the battery is full. You stop measuring your trip in caravan park nights.
VoltX 12V 100W Folding Solar Mat ETFE (Solar Panel Only)
How Much Solar Do I Actually Need?
Right, the question.
Work out your daily watt-hour budget first. A 60-litre 12V fridge or a 35L pulls roughly 360 to 480 watt-hours a day in Aussie summer conditions, depending on ambient temperature and how often you open it. LED lights for an evening: 30 to 50Wh. Laptop charging: 60 to 100Wh. Phones, head torches and the camera battery: another 30Wh between them. CPAP for eight hours: 240 to 480Wh, depending on the machine and humidifier. Starlink Mini: 200 to 400Wh a night if you leave it running.
A modest setup (fridge, lights, phones) lands around 500 to 600Wh a day. A loaded one (fridge, CPAP, Starlink, laptop) is closer to 1,200Wh.
Take your daily total, multiply by 1.5 to cover cloud and battery efficiency losses, then divide by four (the rough national average peak sun hours, which is conservative). For 600Wh a day, that is 225W of panel. Round up to 200W if you tour mostly above the Tropic of Capricorn or in summer; bump to 300W if you spend winters in Tasmania or Victoria.
The other half of the equation is the battery. As a rule of thumb for a 12V system, your panel wattage in watts should be roughly twice your battery capacity in amp-hours. Run a 100Ah battery on a 50W panel, and you will struggle to refill it on a cloudy day. Run a 50Ah battery on 300W of panel, and your regulator will be choking off most of the production because the battery is already full by 11am.
Which Outbax Kit Suits Which Trip?
Outbax stocks three setups that cover ninety per cent of customers, and the differences matter more than the spec sheets suggest.
The VoltX 12V 100W Flexible Solar Panel is the one we recommend for campervan and small van builds where the panel sits permanently on the roof. It curves to match a fibreglass roof, weighs little, and survives the kind of weather a fixed roof panel cops without complaint. Pair it with a 50 to 80Ah lithium and you have enough top-up for a single fridge plus phone charging. It is not the kit recommended for someone who tours full-time. Two cloudy days will eat into your battery faster than this panel can refill it.
The VoltX 12V 160W Folding Solar Mat is the weekender's choice. Most customers buying their first portable kit settle here. Set up takes under four minutes from the carry case. It ships with an MPPT regulator built in, which is the right call. It will keep a 40 to 60-litre fridge running across a long weekend with one cloudy day, paired with a 100Ah AGM or 80Ah lithium.
The VoltX 12V 200W Folding Solar Mat is the kit for anyone heading off for more than a week. If you have a 60 to 80-litre fridge, a CPAP, or you stream Starlink at night, this is your floor, not your ceiling. The reason it is our most popular size is straightforward: it gives you a buffer. On a sunny day in the Pilbara, it will refill a 100Ah lithium from 40 per cent before lunch.
VoltX 12V 200W Fixed Solar Panel Black Frame
What We Measured in the Field
We took a VoltX 200W mat to three places between January and June 2025 and watched the output meter every thirty minutes between 8 am and 4 pm. Here are the numbers, rounded:
Cobar, NSW (January, 41°C peak): sustained 168 to 182W between 9 am and 3 pm on a clear day. The 0.3 per cent per degree loss above 25°C is real but small. Heat is not the killer that internet forums make it.
Hobart, Tasmania (June, 12°C, partial cloud): 195 to 210W midday on the clear day, 60 to 90W on the overcast one. Two cloudy days back-to-back drained 100Ah lithium from 100 per cent to 38 per cent with a 60L fridge running.
Darwin, NT (February, wet season): average daily yield was about 35 per cent below dry season output. Afternoon storms killed the second half of every day. If you tour the Top End between November and April, plan for forty per cent more panels than you think you need, or accept a generator as backup.
Five Mistakes Most Customers Make
- Buying watts but ignoring the regulator. A PWM regulator on a 200W panel can lose you the equivalent of a 40W panel. Always look for MPPT.
- Sizing for a sunny day instead of a cloudy week. Your panel has to refill the battery on the worst day, not the best. Plan for four peak sun hours, not eight.
- Pairing a big panel with a small battery (or the reverse). The two need to be in proportion. Ask our support team if you are unsure; we will look at your fridge and battery and tell you straight.
- Discharging an AGM below 50 per cent. AGM cycle life collapses below 50 per cent depth of discharge. If you want to use the bottom half of the battery, you want lithium (LiFePO4), full stop. That is no longer the controversial answer it was in 2020.
- Storing a folded mat flat in a hot car. Surface temperatures above 60°C in storage shorten cell life. Fold, slip into the carry bag, and store inside the caravan, not on the dashboard.
BUNDLE DEAL - VoltX 12V 100AH Lithium Battery + 8KW Inverter + 3* 200W Solar Panel + 3.5KW Generator
Folding Mat or Flexible Panel: Which One
If you tour, get a folding mat. You can chase the sun, park in shade to keep the van cool, and pack it away when you move. If you live in your van and you want zero faff, get a flexible panel on the roof, but accept that you will sometimes have to park in full sun on hot days for it to be useful. The third option, a roll-up solar blanket, suits 4WD tourers with limited storage and rooftop tents. They are lighter than folding mats but less robust.
Powering Starlink, CPAP, and Modern Gear
A Starlink Mini draws around 25W in standby and up to 40W in use. Eight hours of evening use is roughly 200 to 300Wh, which a 200W mat handles easily on a sunny day. A CPAP machine with a humidifier is the bigger draw, often 240 to 480Wh a night. Pair the 200W mat with a 100Ah lithium, and you are fine. Add an induction kettle to the mix, and you are not; that is a job for a generator or a second panel and a 200Ah battery bank.
Warranty, Support, and the Boring Bits That Matter
Outbax is Australian-owned, and our support team is in Sydney. Phone lines are open seven days a week, and the people who answer the phone use our products. The VoltX folding mats carry a manufacturer's warranty on the panels and a separate warranty on the regulator; details sit on each product page. We ship the same business day, and 97 per cent of NSW orders arrive within two business days. WA usually takes four to five.
If something breaks, ring us. We stock spare regulators and Anderson plug cables in the warehouse, which is more than I can say for most of the grey import sellers on Amazon.
VoltX SRNE 12V/24V 20A MPPT Solar Charge Controller
When Solar Is the Wrong Answer
Solar is not the right kit for everyone. If you camp three weekends a year at powered sites, save your money. If you run an air conditioner off a battery for hours a day, you are looking at a generator or a much bigger off-grid setup than a folding mat. If your trips are entirely under tree canopy in dense bush, solar is going to frustrate you.
For everyone else, who is most Australian campers, the maths is straightforward. A 200W folding mat plus a 100Ah lithium and an MPPT regulator pays for itself inside one Big Lap, and you camp where you want.
Ready to check out your solar options? Visit Outbax today and choose from an array of monocrystalline solar panels and mats, all engineered for the Australian outdoors.
