Solar pros and cons?

Hi,

Solar DIY is about $2.50 per watt inclusive. For the cost of a Honda 3000 or Yamaha 3000 you can have a pretty wonderful solar system.

Solar is pretty expensive.

In addition to solar, I'd highly recommend switching at least some of your lights to LED.

I'm using lights from here and have been happy with them.

Here's the story I did when I first switched back in 2009: My EASY LED Upgrade

I have a system from AM Solar. The only "con" is that a solar system costs a lot of money.

sjholt wrote:
Do you need all those special chargers and electronics for these iron batteries or can I use any charger/solar that gets up to 14.6 volts.

Thanks,

From what I've read you don't need the special chargers. Just make sure your charger does not go over the batteries voltage rating although the Battery Management System should disable the chargers input to the batteries in those instances. The BMS should also disable charging when the batteries are full too. Make sure you are aware of what the particular batteries BMS is capable of.

Do you need all those special chargers and electronics for these iron batteries or can I use any charger/solar that gets up to 14.6 volts.

Thanks,

pianotuna wrote:
Hi mena,

The batteries are coming down in price--but then I looked at the chargers. *OUCH*.

Yeah, I haven't seen a cheap LI charger yet but I've read that existing chargers can be used. Most won't have the correct charge profile but at least they won't damage the batteries. Some of the higher end inverter/chargers have LI profiles.

Hi mena,

The batteries are coming down in price--but then I looked at the chargers. *OUCH*.

Hi Reed,

Is this the company? http://www.manzanitamicro.com/

I'm hoping LFP will be my next battery bank. We'll see how the pricing goes at that time. My present bank is only 3 years old so I have a ways to go (unless I sell the rig first). Maybe I should start putting some money away now. LOL! I've read about one or two people here with LFP besides yourself and am quite surprised given the general fear of anything that can possibly catch fire here. Question! Do you know the voltage drop on your bank when running the air con?

Ron Jones was apparently the first to go with LFP and he has apparently had good luck so far over two years. He and I have been writing back and forth a bit. Liberty Coaches, the pretty much high end of Prevost rebuilds at $1.8 M and up have been outfitting their rigs with LFP for two years with apparent satisfaction of both vender and purchaser.

We have used the LFP for six months with no problems. Our son Cary, as noted earlier, has been in solar and wind power for 22 years plus six years in research at NMSU and has signed contract to put in panels and low voltage 1.5 megawatt system for power company. He likes the batteries he purchased from Mananita (sic)but figures he will have to reprogram controller since Manzanita designs systems for electric vehicles (cars, boats etc) which require much higher power output than does a 5th wheel, even when using air conditioning where we are drawing 1 kW from batteries and about the same from solar panels.

Reed and Elaine Cundiff