Utilizing Solar with FHU

As stated above, shutting off the circuit breaker to your battery charger / converter will stop it from consuming 120 volt power to keep the battery full overnight. However that same circuit breaker might be supplying all the 120 volt circuits for say the bathroom, basement storage compartments, and such.

You could unplug the converter/charger. If it is easy to get to, this might work out well. On my RV, I have a 400 watt solar system and my converter/charger is actually a inverter/charger and it is easy to shut it off when not needed - most of the year.

What about the solar system? A pair of 140 watt solar panels will supply your 'normal' needs. You can buy those here for about $229 each. SunElec.com

As for mounts, buy a few feet of 2" angle aluminum (Home Depot) and cut to 6" long. Drill three holes 3/16" for #10 screws into the roof, and 5/16" for the bolt into the solar panel frame.

Wire: #10 romex from Home Depot, grey water resistant UV resistant and direct burial type. Run the wire down the back of the refrigerator vent to the basement, to the batteries.

Controller: Get a PWM 20 amp controller they are cheap now, about $20. It will turn on the solar when the battery is low, and shut it off around 14.0 volts.

Wiring is pretty simple. Just keep the ground wires to one side and +12 on another.

Good luck,

Fred.

unplug/unbreaker the converter/charger.
add solar to supply 12v loads and charge battery.

Your full hookups meter your electrical usage?
Have never been at a campground like that, but guess it must be a seasonal site.

Like others said, seamlessly merging a solar/battery/inverter system with shore power would be expensive.

So I would just manually switch from one to the other system as needed. Use shore power only when you need the extra capacity: A/C and so on, or when your batteries need charging and solar isn't doing it.

Nothing else needed - Just use the circuit breaker on the Power Distribution Panels to control the converter/charger unit. The shore power will run all the things connected to the 120VAC side the solar panels will keep the battery bank topped off to run everything on the 12VDC side.

If you have a low wattage Power Inverter setup for HDTV and a few other low wattage 120VAc items then the Solar Panels will be used for that as well by keeping your battery bank topped off.

Just think of the solar panels as a battery charger...

Roy Ken

How about hooking up a On/Off switch inside the RV? Then you could turn the shore power on and off as you need it without going outside.
That would be relatively inexpensive.

In moat cases when hooked to shore power, the system is in bypass and no power is being supplied by the batteries. The batteries are being maintained by the converter and solar would supplement only.

I am sure it can be done but you are looking at two different systems, a grid tie inverter supplying power to offset shore power, and you will also need a solar controller to supply power to your batteries. And never the twain shall meet. They must be kept separate electrically, but with switching/relays it can be done
Check out the forum and see what they suggest, and yes it will likely get expensive.

Northern Arizona Wind & Sun