Shadow Cruiser S185 FBR Solar Install/Upgrade

westend wrote:
I'd add a panel to the roof. That's a lot of hardware for just 100W. Charging the batteries while in storage is the icing on the cake. If you do add a panel or two, you can keep busy by installing more battery capacity. When all that is done, you're now ready for inverting to AC. It's an evil thing, this self-contained power generation. :B

BTW, nice work on the solar installation.

Yea, I actually expected to need an inverter this year to run the microwave but it turns out the toddler doesn't want mashed food anymore so we avoided that requirement (for now). You are probably right about a lot of hardware; the nerd/engineer in me really enjoys all the data though.

ewarnerusa wrote:
Hello -Oz-. Good to see another Montanan on here. I like your solar setup, great job. My opinion is similar to westend's, that is a lot of hardware for a 100 watt system! But you've got a great foundation for expansion.

I'm of the "mount 'em fixed and flat on the roof" mindset, no input required and always charging during daylight. Parking the trailer in the sun has not been as much of an inconvenience as it may seem, it does get hot during the day but we're usually not inside the trailer at that time anyway. I used to fret about not having a nice monitoring system or contemplate purchasing the $100+ remote monitoring panel for my solar charge controller, but now I'm perfectly comfortable with a glance at my digital voltmeter that I've wired up. I know what charging state things are in based on the voltage reading and that is enough info. When I get really curious I just turn my laptop on and interface with the charge controller via RS-232 cable and I have access to everything going on with the solar. I'm running a Morningstar Tristar PWM controller.

Yea, I'm just north of you in Great Falls. That is good to know that the flat roof has been working; I wondered about in real life since we're pretty far north.

It seems that as of today I will definitely be mounting an additional solar panel on the roof (probably in about a week and a half) so I'll have more updates then. I'll probably post beforehand to get your guys' opinion on shading (it will definitely be a problem in this small roof). I'm going to start with the shattered one (at 53% of max efficiency) and then when it dies (probably this summer) I'll just replace it. That should help with the wife wondering where all the money is going since last year it "worked just fine".

smkettner wrote:
Nice work.

I would toss the broken panel and install a new panel on the roof.

I am not real excited about using the 120v outlet as a 12v inlet.
Anderson Powerpole would be better IMO.

https://powerwerx.com/

Sadly I think you're right; I was going to use this encapsulation stuff but with panels being as cheap as they are these days spending 33% with no guarantee of fixing anything it doesn't seem worth the effort/cost.

Those powerpole things are pretty nifty. If I had known about them it would have been a pretty good option that no one could ever confuse.

Thankfully since I have never actually been camped on shore power (or generator) no one expects the 120V outlets to do anything.