Solar Installation

[Heap64]

The first mod was to build a custom battery box frame that now houses 4 6v golf cart batteries.

I also needed to pick up a couple pieces of black pipe to reroute the gas line just a bit.









I can remove the battery top and check levels without lowering the batteries if the tanks aren't there. But otherwise I can lower them 6" or 12". I used a floor jack to raise them today. But I think in the future I might be able to leverage using the trailer jack if the trailer isn't hitched up to the truck. I will soon be installing a battery watering system (Flow-Rite RV2000 system with hand pump) so I won't need to lower the batteries to add water.

The batteries are from Sam's Club. They are 6v 230 amp hour golf cart batteries that have the Duracell name on them but are actually made by East Penn/DEKA which are suppose to be a good battery. I understand that Sam's Clubs that are East of the Mississippi carry these.


Fast forward a couple weeks..


Solar controller board was wired up on the kitchen table. I love my wife! The box on the left is the controller. The other box will hold the inbound and outbound fuses and disconnect. The funky black thing is a shunt that allows the battery monitor to sense what is going in or out of the batteries. The lugs made it easy to pre-wire this and later add the battery and solar connections. The cables are made from 4 ga flexible welding cable which is easy to work with in tight spaces.




Morningstar Tristar TS-45 PWM Controller (I will be installing the optional temperature sensor when I run the battery cables and hook up the existing house wires that currently run to the battery.
The disconnect box is a Midwest U065F1 60A 240V Fused Disconnect.

I mounted the controller board and the 4 ga cables up through the wardrobe fished through the roof and they exit the roof just in front of our TV antenna. I used 3/4" plastic conduit up through the wardrobe to hide the wiring a bit. On the roof I will be installing a combiner box. It is supposed to hit 60 tomorrow so I decided to wait until after work tomorrow to use the Dicor and install the combiner box.

The extra wires are for the battery monitor. Down the road someday I plan to install an inverter on this board as well so I'm going to run 00 wire to my battery bank.


For others interested in doing this yourself. I will list some great online resources I found when doing my research.

HandyBob's Blog « Making off grid RV electrical systems work

Kelly's RV Solar Blog | All the Electricity we need and then some!

RV Electrical


I used a hydraulic cable crimper to make up the cables along with heat shrink tubing. I believe you can get cables crimped at many welding suppliers or NAPA stores. With two sons that are mechanics I decided to add this tool to my tool chest.

TEMCo Crimper Link


Fast forward a couple weeks..

Here are a couple pictures of wrapping up the battery box. The new battery cables and battery temp sensor are now installed. As well as a battery watering system. Even though I could drop the battery box with a jack or maybe even with the aid of the tongue jack I decided this setup would be easy to use and will probably result in me keeping the water levels maintained better.





This second picture was right before I put the battery box top on and put the propane tanks on for hopefully the last time for awhile.

I have been eyeing Renogy 100 Watt Monocrystalline Solar Panel's for some time now. I had seen them listed on both their web store and Amazon at $149.99. I hadn't thought to look on eBay, I took a look and was presently surprised to find out that they sell them there for $128.99 with free shipping! Tons of good feedback with very few negative comments.

Renogy 100w Panel eBay Link

Man they make this too easy, a few clicks later I have 5 100w panels in my cart and I check out with 500w of solar for $664.95 delivered!



Fast forward a couple more weeks..

I pulled it out of storage and put the finishing touches on the solar install.


Completed controller board.


25Y Roof with 5 100w Renogy Panels





OK so how does it perform?


24.8 amps going in around noon.



I will report back after we have used it some, but it appears to work well from what I see so far.

We will be giving it the acid test later this fall when we head up the Michigan UP for 2 weeks of off the grid camping!


Happy Camper
-James

[Rice]

Looking at the pictures, I'm curious. If I were placing those panels, I would have put the "middle" one farther away from the mushroom-shaped thing, to eliminate the possibility of a shadow. Probably just a few inches would have been enough, and it looks like there's room. Is there a reason you placed it exactly where you did?

[Heap64]

Golden_HVAC wrote:
I hope that the battery rack is not hanging to low. I guess you will find out after the first trip, if any of the paint is scraped away.

Great job. Probably with some more of the orange blocks under the battery, you could lower the hitch jack enough to touch down, then raise it enough to make installing the battery watering system easy.

I have Hydrocaps, and that pretty much recycles the leaving battery gas back into water, so I only need to check the battery every 6 months or so.

Fred.

I should be good on clearance, the Arctic Fox has a lot of ground clearance. The ball hitch is 29" high. The bottom of the new battery box is higher than the jack will run, either step or the bottom of my hitch. The height of this trailer is what made me think to try this approach. I ended up installing a battery watering system. I thought the odds of me keeping the water level up on the batteries would be much better if I could do it without and trouble.

[Keith_Haw]

Nice setup.

[time2roll]

chr$ wrote:
Has anyone here used 24V inverters? I'm thinking about adding two more 6V batteries, tapping one bank for the lighting/refer control loads, the other bank for the water pump load, and the total 24V series load for a 1500 Watt Military Spec pure sine inverter with 24V input. New in box for $80.

Member 2oldman uses 24v. 12v provided by Victron DC/DC converter.

[camperpaul]

chr$ wrote:
Has anyone here used 24V inverters? I'm thinking about adding two more 6V batteries, tapping one bank for the lighting/refer control loads, the other bank for the water pump load, and the total 24V series load for a 1500 Watt Military Spec pure sine inverter with 24V input. New in box for $80.

That is the easiest way to fry your batteries.

Your 12Volt and 24Volt systems have to be totally separate.

[chr_]

Has anyone here used 24V inverters? I'm thinking about adding two more 6V batteries, tapping one bank for the lighting/refer control loads, the other bank for the water pump load, and the total 24V series load for a 1500 Watt Military Spec pure sine inverter with 24V input. New in box for $80.

[BubbaChris]

Beautiful install and documentation. Thanks for sharing.

I hope it performs well for you.

Best regards,
Chris

[Golden_HVAC]

I hope that the battery rack is not hanging to low. I guess you will find out after the first trip, if any of the paint is scraped away.

Great job. Probably with some more of the orange blocks under the battery, you could lower the hitch jack enough to touch down, then raise it enough to make installing the battery watering system easy.

I have Hydrocaps, and that pretty much recycles the leaving battery gas back into water, so I only need to check the battery every 6 months or so.

Fred.

[AlbertaNewbie]

Sweet idea, wish I had welding skills, and a welder......

[Heap64]

I dreamed that one up. I was looking for a way to tuck 4 batteries in that area and still allow them to be replaced. I designed it and welded it up ahead of time and then couldn't quite get it in place without cutting part two of the angle iron pieces back off 😞 I ended up finishing up the welding in place. It did of course add a fair amount of tongue weight. But the Arctic Fox is pretty heavy anyway and has a lot of ground clearance so that helped. It hangs down about 6" below the tongue frame.

I used 2" 3/16" tube steel for the bottom portion and 2.5" 3/16" for the top. The rest was 2.5" angle. I drilled out some holes and use receiver pens to allow it to be lowered using a floor jack.

[AlbertaNewbie]

Nice install! Love the batt. Box setup alot. Is it a modified design of the original equipment or is it something you dreamed up? Need more pics.

[Golden_HVAC]

Wow!

That looks great!

Fred.

[Heap64]

Thanks!

That is still on my to do list. For now I have a piece of plywood I set in place. That is the area I store my portable grill.


I have a few LED lights that I have purchased from M4products.com I wanted to make sure they performed well before buying too many. So far they look like they will work great.

I had a few I ordered from China that didn't put out enough light.

[pigman1]

Congratulations on a clean install. You'll love the panel output and how easy it makes keeping the batteries up. Of course you'll now have to go over the rig and minimize use. Things like phantom loads, LED's, and keeping close watch on your standard use and way of living. We also have about 560W of panels, a Morningstar MPPT controller, and plenty of wire size to reduce line losses. We find we can actually also run a 1 meter Hughes Net Internet dish and a few hours of TV use without having to run the generator.

Again, a great design and install. Best of luck with it.

[westend]

Nice work, James! I bet you'll like the "hands off" part of solar charging. That battery box is well engineered.

If I had one suggestion, it would be to get some type of shield over the lugs in the storage compartment. With my usual MO, I'd have a rake or tent pole across them in short order.