Wire size needed for solar when pre-wired at factory.

Hi Chuck,

I'd go for the 3000 watt Magnum pure sine wave unit. It allows the batteries to support surges from items such as the air conditioner.

Thank you everyone for the advice. I plan to order the unit with the optional Magnum 2800 pure sine wave inverter. Any additional suggestions or comments are appreciated.

Hi wintersun,

Add a diversion load to your system. A 12 volt water heater will let you use those "lost watts". Or you can do as I do, and turn the fridge or water heater to 120 volts for a while.

10 gauge is adequate for any RV. As you will have lots of real estate you can choose 34 volt panels and reduce line loss even more. Your house has 12ga wiring but no problems in part due to having 120 volts.

Usually the controller to battery bank wires are the important ones as they the controller will be feeding 14.5 volts to the bank and having 6ga or even 4ga can help.

I say can help as my setup takes my batteries to 100% within several hours and the remainder of the output from the panels is lost.

#6 is fine. If the system design goes big you are probably going to run higher voltage and MPPT controller anyway.

Make sure the feed terminates close to the battery where you will put the controller.

Will the battery compartment hold 4+ GC2 or L16?

I'd say #6 is more than enough. Are you sure this is the wire from the panels to the controller, and not the wire from the controller to the batteries?

I routed separate #10s for power/ground from each of my 2 80W panels to the controller. Routing was easy with the thhn wires via the aluminum box frame from the roof to the sidewall, then down via a cabinet to the controller area.

Hi,

#6 should be just fine for all but an insanely large solar system. I'm going for 1250 watts in the next year and will do an MPPT technology charge controller so I can use higher voltage.

How many watts of panels do you plan on having?

ChuckandSue wrote:
what are your thoughts of ordering it with a heavier gauge wire to the roof when built?

#6 wire is good to about 50 amps, comfortably around 40-45, which will handle 540w of panels in parallel. In series, no problem with more wattage panels.

#10 is fine for me, but then I'm wired in series carrying only 7 amps.