What can you do with solar?

Hi rvingman,

I'm glad to hear about the solar oven--another "outside the box" (lol or maybe "in the box"?) thought.

That is a classic example. #10 wire would be fine from the panels since it is not an MPPT controller. But #12 from the controller to the battery bank is awfully small for so long a run and doesn't have a sufficient amp rating to be up to code. That is where the #4 wire and moving the controller closer would help greatly.

My own system uses 4-12 (doubled up) from the panels to a combiner box, then a #10 prewire to the controller, and #8 from the controller to the battery bank with a temperature sensor to optimize charging voltage. My over all losses do matter since it is MPPT, so I went to series/parallel to have 33 volts to the controller, reducing transmission losses to less than 1%.

rvingman wrote:
We purchased our 5er in 2000 and had a "system" installed when it was built. It sufficed our needs (with much conservation and not much boondocking) through 6 years of fulltiming. It consisted of 4-75W panels, a Morningstar controller located about 12 feet from the batteries fed by #12 wire down to a 2000W Heart Charger/Inverter and 4-6V golf cart batteries.

When we got ready to put the 5er on our summer property in Colorado two summers past, I knew we would have to somehow improve the system to provide for our needs.

I found help with Handy Bob. I was planning on adding more panels and Bob convinced me that our system could be "re-engineered" and might not require extra panels. I was a little skeptical, but knew that it wouldn't hurt to improve what was there and add later, if necessary.

He took our system and put jumper cable size wire (#4?) from the panels to the relocated controller by the batteries, and IT WORKS! I simplified the installation details just a little, but not much. Here is a summation and what we do.

4-75W Siemens panels (13 years old)

Tristar TS-45 controller (Bob advised we didn't need MPPT since this was summer use only.)

4-Trojan T-105 batteries

13 year old Heart inverter

Trimetric TM-2025 (not essential, arguably, but essential for us! Makes it sooooooo easy to manage and see what is happening.)

We live from mid-May to Mid September totally off the grid in one spot. Last summer my wife worked the entire time so she had her laptop on from around 7:30 each weekday until at LEAST 6:00 and often later than that. She also had her printer on, keeping her cell phone charged etc. During that time, I used my laptop probably 3-4 hours a day. We have an older style 32" LCD, so it is not as efficient as some of the newer models, but we probably use it an average of 3-4 hours daily, mostly with a DVD and home theater system.

When necessary, we use the microwave sparingly, her hair drier sparingly, run some power tools, charge my phone, run the outside little fountain for the birds (most of the day) reading lights, charge my wife's iPad, run a line to the truck camper battery occasionally to keep it charged, run the submersible pump to fill the water tanks, run the subterfuge (did I spell that right?) to spin the excess water from the clothes, the water pump.

Gosh, let me sum it up and say we just live! And we don't feel deprived, even though we have to be conservative if we have a couple of cloudy days. We do have a generator for back-up and I sometimes will run it to keep it exercised, but honestly I think we could make it all summer without it, unless we had extended cloudy days. But, it is there and I use it and if I was going to run the Flowbee for my haircut for very long, I would fire it up because it is smarter. As a side note, the directional orientation of our rig is not optimum for sun, as our tilted panels can't be oriented to the south, but again, we get away with it because it is SUMMER.

I tried to make this shorter and should have just said read my blog. But, hopefully this gives you a good picture. Since the price of panels has come down, I am thinking about adding a panel, just for grins, but I won't HAVE to.

And, if you are a solar enthusiast get a solar Sun Oven! We love ours!