Members Solar Installations With Pics

2oldman,

Are you also using 24V battery bank? If so I'll add that as it's unique.

JiminDenver wrote:
It would be nice to see this become a sticky.

I've been wishing that there was a separate forum for "Solar." Or at least a separate category within Tech Issues.

Wayne

Mine is: 810w (6@135w), tiltable, series, Outback 60a controller, 8 -12v AGM

It would be nice to see this become a sticky.

Here are a couple of pictures that I took while recoating the roof on my 97 Bounder. Some of the panels date back to the 1994 installation on another 85 class C, and where moved to this RV back in November of 96.

The two large panels where my 'new addition' in the winter of 99, on sale for 'only' $429 - 120 watt panels. Still producing power some 16 years later!

Golden_HVAC wrote:
4-6-2012

rickthescot wrote:
Sounds like a great idea. I guess asking for pictures again is not going to persuade you though. We are visual creatures and I don't think 1000 words will accomplish what one image will. You can do it, just one pic.

More pictures that I took a few days ago to post pictures of my solar panels, and their mounts. Some pictures are really close up pictures of the solar panel mounts, and give a clear picture of howrough the surface is.

Golden_HVAC wrote:
Hi,

This is my front pair of panels. 120 watt mounted on a curved roof, 102" wide.



This is the mount it is held on with three rivets into the frame, and then the bottom half is 6" long aluminum, with nutsert in the upper piece, bolt you can not see from the outside edge pointing inward.









This picture shows the bigfoot panel mount sold by RvSolarElectric for $35 a set back in 1994. I wonder what they cost today?


This picture shows the panels tilted while I was working on the roof.

Fred.

I would like to note that the wiring is really small. The original pair of 45 watt panels, shown tiled to the right at 90 degrees was installed with #10 wire. I used the same wire for the additional 75 watt panel, on the class C, and all of this was transferred to the Bounder in 96. The forward pair of 120 watt panels have their own #10 wire with about 15 amps feeding down to the SB 50 MPPT controller. Back then a SB50 cost was around $350! That was when I was making considerably less money each hour! Minimum wage back then was only about $5.

The cost of solar has come way down since the 'early days'. Now places like [/url=www.sunelec.com]SunElec.com sell panels for nearly $1 per rated watt. I recently looked up a 140 watt panel with frame suitable for RV use at a cost of $229. My 75 watt panel cost $375 back in 1995! The original kit of pair of 45 watt panels, wiring, bigfoot mounts, tilt arms, and controller cost $750 in 94.

Still I figure that I saved well over $3,000 in camping costs, even if I only saved $10 a night. I did dry camp more than 300 nights between 94 and 2005. And between 2005 and 2008, an additional 300 nights +. In 2008 I started working again, but lived in the RV, without turning on the battery charger, and stayed that way until 2013.

Solar is GREAT, and saved a lot of money in my case!

I make my own roof brackets out of 6" long 2" angle aluminum, with 3 holes 3/16" and #10 screws into the roof, and 5/16" hole for a 1/4-20 bolt and nutsert into the panel and frame of the panel (as shown above.)

Good luck on your own solar projects!

Fred.