Joining the Solar crew

Congrats, thanks for sharing, it's on my long to do list, DW wants a hard side now instead of the popup, then solar on that one.

Later you may decide for better controller that has temperature compensation.
I see the voltage of my system reach as high as 14.9 when the batteries are cold...
Think about 45deg on the battery post and the voltage is peaked. Makes a lot of difference.

I have helped several folks install those panels and we opted to use MPPT because of the 18.x Vmp.... PWM will do good too.


Congratulations on your install!

Jim

Went out with the TC, trailer, and horse to a riding clinic with my wife. We were out for 8 or so hours. kind of fun checking and seeing that the batteries stayed fully charged no matter what I had on during the day. Of course I didn't have much of a load but my voltage meter bore out the readings....

Looks like a nice install. Mono crystal 24 volt panels, good choice. A PWM charger should work just fine. There is a lot of pro MPPT controller sentiment on the forum but your PWM controller should work very close to as well. I have a 65 watt panel with a Kyocera PWM controller. My solar system at it's best will put out 3.8 or so amps at 14.4 volts. In a full day of sun, it will do a decent job of charging my 2 group 31 AGMs. Eventually I'd like to have somewhere between 3 and 400 watts of panels on the roof. That is where the magic number of charge requirement is for our amount of use and cloudy, rainy days.
Looking forward to hearing your first performance report.

looks good Eric, thanks for bring us along.

Nice install Eric! Glad to see you getting your feet wet with solar. Looking forward to your reports of you fishing while your solar is hard at work, back at camp.

b

Well my solar is installed and running, minor hiccups and a wtf but its all sorted out. 3 hours start to finish with two guys working on separate projects until we needed four hands. First the hiccups:The PO install had the original charge controller mis wired so it lead to a WTF after we had everything installed and wired up and the new charge controller read "over voltage condition" The volt meter showed 24 volts.
Up on the roof we were mystified the lines were in parallel. I isolated one panel 24 volts same with the other.
Went online, controller is designed to handle 12 and 24 volt panels and sense system voltage and provide the correct one so I do have 24 volt panels, We figured out the mis wiring due to the previous system and corrected it, the controller is now showing normal condition whew. Last time I will ever trust that the previous owner did the proper wiring.
The old wiring had the controller inside a cabinet in a useless place and the wirring...yuck. The new controller is mounted on the cabinet in the step up week to the cabover and the wiring is now in a plastic conduit anchored to the side wall out of the way on the inside.
After some discussion and though about how I put the kayaks on the roof we put the panels above the cabover on either side of the sky light screwed and sealed with dicor into the Lance Aluminum frame

Still to be completed is the install of a vent cap as branch protection over the OEM roof plug and covering the exposed wires with dicor to attach them to the roof and prevent wind flutter and to seal all the electrical connections with a dicor seal

Bka0721, I know what you mean. This time last year I was pulling wires, crimping ends and mounting panels. Now all you have to do is watch the power come in and figure out ways to use more of it. Oh and remember to exercise the generator once a month.

Buzzcut1, I look forward to see photos of your install.

Hi Eric. Have lots of fun installing and learning your system. In some ways, I am a bit sad that my Solar Project is finished, but I learned a lot while doing it. Since you enjoy all types of weather in your TC, like me, you might give some serious consideration on a battery monitor to compliment your current system. While the summertime is pretty slam dunk with minimal monitoring and high return for solar harvesting, the shoulder seasons and winter are where a good monitoring discipline, so as you can see patterns develope and can react quicker for suppliemental charging sources for your battery bank.

Worthy of another thread, in what others have to suggest from their own uses. I have my own choice too.

Looking forward to you documenting your installation.

b

I know your excited about the install, love them Renogy panels.