Question about solar panels

Brettmm92 wrote:
Thanks for all the information!

I definitely plan to get a battery, more so now since the emergency brake function is pretty important.

Another thing that I wish I put in the original question is that I'm aware an inverter is needed to convert the dc power from the panels to ac. Do the travel trailer wires that connect to the battery have their own inverter or something? And where would I install that? I'd imagine that I'd have to fiddle with the wiring inside as leaving an inverter outside sounds like a bad idea to me

I'm seeing some corrections that need to be made to your thoughts and explanations. This statement "convert the dc power from the panels to ac""convert the dc power from the panels to ac" is incorrect as the power is not from the panels. The power is from the battery bank. The panels and controller only charge the batterey bank.

The inverter is or can be done in a couple ways. One way is to wire the 120v side(output)into your 120v system on you RV and has some kind of transfer switch associated with it so when you plug the trailer into shore power it doesn't fry the inverter. Another way is to kind of have the inverter as a stand alone source of 120v power. In either case, you want to get the inverter as close to the battery bank as possible and be real generous with the 12v wire size....Generous is not #6 or #4. Generous is like 1/0, 2/0 etc. This of course depends on the rating of the output of the inverter and how close it is to the battery bank,