Solar info

Hi reed,

Have a safe trip!

pianotuna

Thanks - will read about it. So far are happy with Olympian Wave 8 but the price is not much different and the Olympians' get dust on the facing and give out.

Heading to Guatemala in an hour via Santa Fe, NM, Dallas, and Guatemala City.

Reed

Hi reed,

Here is a web page for you. Vented Platinum Cat

pianotuna

Sorry, forgot to thanks you for the information on the Platinum Cat heater. I shall look into this immediately. I always read through every post on a forum as you never know where the nuggets might occur.

Reed and Elaine Cundiff

The voltage from each of the 3 x 235 W panels in series is around 100 V to minimize voltage drop. This goes through a Morningstar charge controller which reduces voltage to whatever the battery suite (peak power tracking)requires (45 to 60 V).

The panels do have bypass diodes but older son Cary (who I am asking questions of at this time and who 6 years of research at NMSU alternative energy labs and 22 years of design/fabrication experience) says their main purpose is to prevent over-charging.

The voltage to the Magnum inverter is 48 V nominal.

A second controller might improve slightly but the expense probably is not efficacious.

We just had 3 days of snow and temperatures down to -4 F (-19 C). Gosh, solar doesn't work that well with 6" of snow on the panels. However, the 9.7 kW-hours of LFP was only down by 30% (Elaine left the inverter on overnight twice and that takes almost 60 W (5 amps at 12 V or 1.1 amp at 54 V). The forced-air heater uses about 1 amp of 54 V (5 amps) so we have well over 100 hours of run time on the forced air-heater. We did use the Olympian Wave 8 to help heat but kept the forced air heater on high at night to keep the basement warm and the pipes from freezing. We usually set the heater at 45 to 50 at night if the temperature is above freezing (we used to set it at 38 but we are now 73 and getting a bit more woosy). The interior was kept around 65 for this purpose (keeping basement warm) and I much prefer 45 or so for sleeping.

Sun came out today and we charged over 2500 W and voltage is at 53.8 V.

We are flying to Guatemala tomorrow out of Santa Fe, NM for 8 to 10 weeks of Spanish lessons and travel.

Figured it was time to learn to speak the language after one winter in Baja and three in Yucatan and Guatemela (don't need it in Belize). There are just to many great places in the Americas where the populace is not expertly conversant in English.

Our lack of Spanish was noted in particular after the wreck just west of Orizaba in March. Elaine broke 3 ribs and 8 bones in right wrist (compound fracture - bones were sticking out 2" or so). The only damage I had was bruised right lower leg (whipped up against dash boarding). Elaine was operated immediately upon reaching hospital in Orizaba (wonderful hospital) and I was examined in a green robe. I thought the nurse asked me "Tiene dolares?" Do you have dollars? What he had asked of course was "Tiene dolores?" Do you have pain. We had good friends in Orizaba who visited each day. I told them this story and they had to sit down laughing. Son Cary and grand-daughter drove down 1700 miles to carry our possessions from the wrecking yard and we visited with the family of a friend of hers in Puebla. I told the story to Dr. Cuatamazo (radiologist) and he fell on the table laughing - and he was not laughing with me.

We will be traveling to southern Arizona when we return and then through Mid-West and across Trans-Labrador Highway and hopefully 4 to 8 weeks on Newfoundland.

I generally learn a lot from these fora.
Reed and Elaine Cundiff

reed cundiff wrote:
the real disadvantage that if one panel is in shade, then entire series gives no power.

Do your panels have bypass diodes? Is this the only post we'll see from you? Wha hoppen to OP?

reed cundiff wrote:
We have 1420 W of solar in two series of three panels each. This has advantage of high voltage but the real disadvantage that if one panel is in shade, then entire series gives no power. This means carefully finding location for at least half a day's insolation, if possible.

Yes I am thinking all parallel or all series is better.
Could get a second controller to maximize each string.

Hi Reed,

Welcome to RVnet!

Fascinating!

Can you give us details about the charge controller?

What is the input voltage for the Magnum inverter?

I would suggest you look at the Platinum Cat which is a vented catalytic heater, rather than the non vented type. It does use a tiny smidgen of 12 volt power, but it also has a thermostat so it can be set at a comfortable temperature.

Hope this does not come out as a rant and it is a bit long-winded

We do have a solar autonomous rig put together by our son Cary Lane (Energy Concepts) as a family hobby just to see if it could be done. He was really excited about new concepts (lithium batteries etc. This was built onto our second Open Range Roamer 337RLS (first is still in a wrecking yard in Mexico, as younger son has said "Dad, you and Mom have been to Yucatan three times and returned twice!"

We have 1420 W of solar in two series of three panels each. This has advantage of high voltage but the real disadvantage that if one panel is in shade, then entire series gives no power. This means carefully finding location for at least half a day's insolation, if possible.

Electricity goes to controllers at 54 V

9.7 kW-hours of lithium ferrosphosphate batteries (Manzanita Micro)
Four battery packs of 4 x 3.1 V LFP batteries each (180 amp-hours at 12.4V)
These four battery packs are in series to provide a battery suite of
180 amp-hours at 54.6 V nominal - 762 amp-hours at 12 V = 9.7 kW-hours
The entire suite weighs about 160# (40 # per battery pack).
This is installed in front baggage compartment which is configured to carry
a 5.6 kW Onan and Open Range figures we could carry 400# there. We have less
than 250# total to include the below inverter/converter/controllers/battery
chargers

Power goes to 4.0 Magnum PSW inverter and converter to 12 V for 5th wheel system.

The 50 amp port remains usable but have tossed the 50 amp cable but kept a 25'
30 amp cable (and 30-50 amp fixture. All we ever plan to use in future is 15 to 20 amp extension cord and will probably toss the 30 amp cable as well.

Cary installed 1000 amp and 500 amp (110 V ac) battery chargers so that if we ever do use line power or our 1.0 kW Honda generator, the 110 goes to chargers, to batteries and then through inverter/converter.

We have run ac (normal 1.5 kW ac) for over 3.5 hours a number a times as combination of solar/battery drain (everything goes through battery suite)with less than 40% drain.

Elaine ran micro-wave for an hour defrosting a very large chicken for over an hour and there was no battery drain beyond a few hundred W-hours if that.

Wound up with 4" of snow for several days while dry camping at Bosque del Apache NWR ("Festival of the Cranes" - 14,000 Sandhill Cranes and 40,000 Ross and Snow Geese). Solar didn't do much but still were getting 50 W through the snow. Full overcast, rain/hail/sleet and then the snow. Temperature was down to 25 at hight and high of 35 in day. Ran the forced air heater quite a bit and voltage was down to 52.4 V with turn-off at 49.1 so we were down about 40% in four days of rotten weather. Had meant to install Olympic 8 (8000 BTU) propane catalytic converter but thought we would have left for Guatemala (flying down this year since it will still be a while before everything is worked out with Mexican insurance and customs aka, having the temporary important licenses legally cancelled for destroyed truck/5th wheel) before cold weather. This keeps the rig warm without electric power. We would have kept batteries at 100% had we done this.

We have gone completely LED except for basement lights which we have left as halogen in case we ever stay where we have shore power and want to keep basement heated from the lamps.

We have not hooked to shore power or to the generator since Cary put system together in June except for testing components.

Son was original licensed solar contractor in New Mexico (1991) and did six years of research work in alternative energy at New Mexico State University's alternative energy research labs before that. He just got a sub-contract(with a crew of 10, four of whom have degrees in ME, EE or physics) for the installation of solar panels and low voltage wiring for a 1.5 megawatt solar system for electric power company. They will do the high voltage work (Cary is licensed master electrician as well but not for high voltage). I just put this down to note that the work was done by an expert. Happily, he did all of the work from design through fabrication as family project and all of the solar equipment was at his contractor cost. I can do routine maintenance on rig but this would have been far above anything I would attempt.

There are several fabricators of lithium-iron-phosphate batteries that are willing to work with RVs at this time: Manazanita and Lithionics

Snowman is absolutely correct in making sure that the objects on the roof (ac cover etc) do not shade the panels. Cary was very careful in placing the panels (I was fetching tools while he and grandson did the work) so this would not happen) and I suggested just dumping some things we don't use such as the tv antenna. C

Cary has friends who are working at developing electric cars and they led him to Manzanita.

Our original rig was 400 W, 2.5 PSW inverter and 4 x 110 amp-hours glass mat batteries. This increased to 700 W when we went from a 28' TT to a 34' 5th wheel. We do think that 700 W was quite sufficient but it is amusing to find out what we can do with 1400 W - and we are about tapped out on the roof though Cary said "well maybe, we could wiggle 3 x 175 W panels on but that would take more controllers etc - and you don't really need it."

Need to look into the air conditioners mentioned on this thread and electric refrigerators mentioned on another. Propane works great and is cheap - but we easily run the 6.0 cf Norcold on the solar from about an hour after sunrise to an hour before sunset. Again, propane is so efficient that we probably just do it because we can. We (I) screwed up a few times in summer and forgot to transfer to propane at night and we were down -4500 W/hours by dawn - but it was fully charged by 1 pm.

OK, sorry about being so long winded.
Reed Cundiff

EsoxLucius wrote:
My equipment on a 2013 Leisure Travel Vans Unity MB:
Five GS100 100 watt solar panels wired in parallel, Vmpp = 17.7 volts, Impp = 5.7 amps, 40.8"x20.7"x1.38", 14.5 lbs., panels mounted slightly off flat to shed water, could add 45 degree tilt bars, 10/2 UV resistant cable panels to combiner box
AM Solar Roof C-Box, 4 gauge wire with 50 amp circuit breaker combiner box to controller
Blue Sky Energy Solar Boost 3024i MPPT controller, IPN-ProRemote w/battery monitor, temperature compensation, 50mv/500amp Shunt Kit, 2 gauge wire with disconnect controller to batteries
Four Fullriver DC220-6 6-volt 220 AH AGM batteries for 440 AH total
Magnum MS2000 inverter/charger, temperature compensation, Magnum ME-RC50 Remote Control, 2 gauge wire with catastrophic fuse to batteries
120-volt AC subpanel, disconnected converter

Great info.
We had a great experience at AM Solar. We wrote all about it on these blog posts at our site:

http://www.walkaboutwithwheels.blogspot.com/2012/10/waiting-area-at-am-solar.html

http://www.walkaboutwithwheels.blogspot.com/2012/10/tuesday-at-am-solar.html

http://www.walkaboutwithwheels.blogspot.com/2012/10/wednesday-at-am-solar.html

http://www.walkaboutwithwheels.blogspot.com/2012/10/wednesday-at-am-solar.html

http://www.walkaboutwithwheels.blogspot.com/2012/10/our-first-full-day-using-solar-power.html

http://www.walkaboutwithwheels.blogspot.com/2012/10/am-solar-enters-customer-service-hall.html

http://www.walkaboutwithwheels.blogspot.com/2012/10/a-quick-summary-of-our-solar-system.html

We will be lifelong customers............