I just got back last night from 10 days in Nevada's Black Rock Desert. I go there several times every summer and it is typically very hot and very dry. Most of my build-out is based on boondocking in the high desert.. The past few days were up around 104ºF. The temperature inside my truck camper stayed in the 75-80ºF range during the heat of the day with the A/C running continuously.
...some solar panels do much better than others as their temp goes higher. Some mounting systems allow much better airflow.
Two of my (4) solar panels are UniSolar US-64's which are supposed to degrade less when hot, but I have not made any attempt to measure their hot performance vs. my Grape Solar panels. All of the panels are on raised mounts about 1" above the roof.
Some batteries are designed for high underhood temps. Maybe some other electronics are better in the heat such as solar controllers, inverters, gensets...etc?
My Odyssey batteries are mounted in the basement of my camper and I have a fan that circulates cabin air through the basement. Even with the fan running 24/7, the batteries were up around 90ºF around the clock (as reported by the inverter & solar charge controllers). All of my chargers are temperature compensated to account for this. The batt's perform
great when warm (not hot), but I am sure that this has reduced their life somewhat. I don't have a thermometer to measure ambient air temp in the basement.
My EU2000i was outside on the dusty ground in direct sunlight (and rain) the entire time and running most of the day... Current draw was 1100-1200W continuous and It never skipped a beat. I have never had any indication that it has ever overheated. Note that in these conditions, I don't run it inside the enclosure.
On Wednesday (and Thurs) I took a nap and ran the A/C from the inverter/batteries for a few hours (needed a break from both the heat and the noise). This ran the batt's down to ~70% SOC. When I re-started the generator to charge the batteries, the charge current was ~105A and after 15 minutes or so the control panel for the inverter/charger displayed an over-temperature alarm (~175ºF internal temp). I turned the charger off and allowed it to cool (fan running), then lowered the max charge current to 50A. The charger operated fine after reducing the current. Interestingly, the inverter section has never set an over-temp alarm even after operating heavy loads for hours on end.
Do you make any special provisions for additional fans? Fridge? Extra fans venting the converter? Extra cooling for the inverter? More genset cooling?
I have one "computer slot fan" inside the fridge and also one 4" fan at the top of the chimney. The fridge kept my beer at 37ºF and the freezer stayed at ~4ºF. I ran the fridge on LPG to reduce the load on my generator.
I have not added any additional cooling to the inverter/charger (which is mounted in a confined space) or generator.
Do you specially shade any part of the RV to avoid direct sun raising the operating temp of any system?
I have made
Reflectix covers to go over all of my windows
inside the TC. I don't honestly know how much insulation benefit I am getting (probably very little), but it does make it nice and dark inside which
feels cooler and makes daytime napping easier.
I know you see much smaller RV's with 2 AC's on the roof here than I was used to.
I have one 7200 btu A/C... but then again my "RV" is a small truck camper.
Do you do anything special with the tires? They seem to die earlier with extreme road temps.
I have not done anything to protect my tires and I don't make any adjustments to the air pressure. I currently have ~75K mi. on them an expect to get another 15K.
And finally... I used excess PV-solar exclusively (via diversion-load output from the solar charge controller) to heat my shower/dishwashing water and had plenty of hot water.
Cheers,
-Mark
