Solar for Northern Lite 811 ???? Pictures?
Have been considering installing solar on my new to me NL 811. Has anyone done this? If so,do you have pictures of where you put panels? Looking at the roof of the 811 I am wondering how it could be ...
Forum Discussion
The ease and options for mounting the panels depends upon the type of roof installed on your model and year camper. It may be aluminum over wood or TPO over 1/4" luan as with mine or fiberglass over foam or oriented strand board. If it is aluminum or fiberglass the VHB type of tape is the easiest approach and with no fastener penetrations the safest as well.
Need to determine where to bring the wiring from the panel or panels into the camper and where to install a charge controller and the wiring to and from the charge controller and the battery bank as where you will install a monitor display if you want this.
After a very involved installation on my Lance 845 of two 100 Watt panels, a C-box, Blue Sky controller, and a second battery in a rack welded under the camper, and running large gauge wiring all through the camper, I would recommend starting by installing a TriMetric charge monitoring device so you can determine your exact needs. After I installed a similar device I found that the factory provided LED display showed the batteries at 100% when they were actually at 90%. That amount of error is very misleading.
If you need 200 AH of battery capacity to make it through your day and night time peak usage then you need to be able to add 200 AH of charging capacity from the solar panels. If you only need to replace 100 AH of charge then the panel output requirements are cut in half.
Panels are made for residential and commercial installations and most are too large for a camper roof. Two exceptions are the 100 Watt panels from Amsolar.com and the 140 Watt Kyocera panel. Both are 17.7v Voc output so can mix and match in an installation.
AMsolar is a good place for advice and for equipment and installation kits. There kits seem expensive but when you only need to buy what you need of items that otherwise sell in large rolls or large pack quantities and factor in your time the AMsolar kits are a good value. If a kit has 10' of cable and you need 16' they will cut a 16' length and you pay only for the extra feet you actually need.
I contacted two camper and one RV dealer in my area and spoke with their tech service people and after that I decided to do it myself as they were completely clueless in terms of the electrical aspects and how to best fasten the panels on the roof.
Appreciate in your planning that if you have a panel that provides enough to charge your battery bank in 4-8 hours that is good enough. Having more output and the ability to recharge in 2-4 hours buys you nothing.
Need to determine where to bring the wiring from the panel or panels into the camper and where to install a charge controller and the wiring to and from the charge controller and the battery bank as where you will install a monitor display if you want this.
After a very involved installation on my Lance 845 of two 100 Watt panels, a C-box, Blue Sky controller, and a second battery in a rack welded under the camper, and running large gauge wiring all through the camper, I would recommend starting by installing a TriMetric charge monitoring device so you can determine your exact needs. After I installed a similar device I found that the factory provided LED display showed the batteries at 100% when they were actually at 90%. That amount of error is very misleading.
If you need 200 AH of battery capacity to make it through your day and night time peak usage then you need to be able to add 200 AH of charging capacity from the solar panels. If you only need to replace 100 AH of charge then the panel output requirements are cut in half.
Panels are made for residential and commercial installations and most are too large for a camper roof. Two exceptions are the 100 Watt panels from Amsolar.com and the 140 Watt Kyocera panel. Both are 17.7v Voc output so can mix and match in an installation.
AMsolar is a good place for advice and for equipment and installation kits. There kits seem expensive but when you only need to buy what you need of items that otherwise sell in large rolls or large pack quantities and factor in your time the AMsolar kits are a good value. If a kit has 10' of cable and you need 16' they will cut a 16' length and you pay only for the extra feet you actually need.
I contacted two camper and one RV dealer in my area and spoke with their tech service people and after that I decided to do it myself as they were completely clueless in terms of the electrical aspects and how to best fasten the panels on the roof.
Appreciate in your planning that if you have a panel that provides enough to charge your battery bank in 4-8 hours that is good enough. Having more output and the ability to recharge in 2-4 hours buys you nothing.
