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

[stsmark]

Aircraft Spruce will have AN/MS spec terminal covers for reasonable prices (under 2.00)for those size cables. Search Terminal Nipples on their site. Nice installation, if I was going to add that weight to a tongue area, it would be on a Northwood's chassis.

[Golden_HVAC]

Looking at your battery box, say you are out camping without the floor jack, it looks like you could stack a couple of 4X4 on each other under the battery box, and lower the jack. Then with the weight on the 4X4, you could remove the pins, and then raise the trailer enough to work on the batteries.

Of course the floor jack is really easy, and will lower it down onto a pair of 4X4's and then you can slide out the jack if you like. . Remember it is well over 300 pounds the way it sits, so careful on your back! LOL

Looks like a great job!

Fred.

[Fisherguy]

I'm also curios, did you weigh the actual tongue weight before and after adding the batteries, when fully loaded for a trip?
Nice job, I wish I could add 2 more batteries but we're already at 1350 pound tongue weight, front slide trailers are always a little more.

[nightshift]

Heap,
Years ago I did a similar install with 4 Trojans. It almost ended in disaster when the A-frame broke while driving in Baja. A welder fixed it with angle iron on each square tube, around 18" long. The arroyos and normal driving was just too much additional torque for the frame.

[Heap64]

I had planned to add some sort of air defector, but so far I haven't' seen any issues from having air bother them. I think the front of the trailer is probably putting a large majority of the air well over the top of the solar panels. I could be wrong. They are about 18" from the front of the trailer and the leading edge is only about 1.5"-2.5" off the roof due to the compound angles of the front of the roof. Most the fasteners are into 3/8" plywood and wood trusses. I couldn't wiggle them when mounted.

If I come across something like a pair of wind deflectors found on pickup back side windows, I might still add them.

With the weather turning good, I'm sure getting the itch to get it out and enjoy it some more.

[4X4Dodger]

A very good installation job and a lesson for all when doing electrical wiring.

I do have one concern and it's Aerodynamic.

The airflow over the front of your roof will come from two places, part of the air that hits the front and flows up and over the top and that which comes straight at the top of the roof as you are going forward.

As that air goes under the solar panels it will tend to become turbulent and will want to lift the panels and vibrate them. This will over time loosen the fasteners to the roof and may cause leaks. Or in the worst case a panel may come loose.

I would put a deflector shield in front of those front panels...like the ones you see on roof racks. this would deflect that turbulent airflow up and over the panels.

Now at 30mph this isnt a big problem but at freeway speeds it will become one quickly.

I also ditto the comment of covering the battery posts.

Great job and I hope it works well for you.

[JiminDenver]

Very nice install!

[Heap64]

I completed this installation last summer with installing a smaller inverter.

We went with the Morningstar SureSine™ it is a 300 watt pure sine wave inverter and is built like a tank with low power draw and no fan. It is also installed with a cutoff switch for while in storage and a remote on/off switch to shut it off when not needed.

I found that I could isolate one circuit of outlets off of the campers system and I tied thay string of outlets into inverter only power. This feeds the two tv locations as well as both bedside outlets for charging our goodies.

We are really happy with our medium sized solar installation, now to just get to use it more often!

[Heap64]

Thanks, I copied this layout from a couple of the installations I referenced earlier in this thread. If you go to those, one of them really lays out what everything is needed for.

Basically the two lugs in the upper right are there to have the solar wires terminated from where they come from the roof. You can follow the red feed from there into the left side of the fused disconnect box I used. That will fuse the solar hot from the roof going into the Solar controller red in. The red out from the solar control goes back through the other side of the fused disconnect box to protect the controller from the battery feed. The blacks just go into the controller and are fed right back out to the shunt. That is there to hook the meter up to. There is one other photo earlier in the thread where you can probably make out the rest of the cables in place. The fuses are actually in a holder that just goes into the fused disconnect.

[McKenziek]

Very impressed with your skills and quality of workmanship. Do you have an updated pic with fuses of this box and explain how its wired?

[Heap64]

Rice, very good points.

I have been surprised as well at "professional" installations that leave you scratching your head. Before buying any panels I took measurements of the trailer roof and all obstructions. I used a free CAD program to draw it out. Then looked at various sized panels to see what seemed to fit the best and bang for the buck. Even deciding how far out to install them away from the vent cover vs. how near the edge of the camper had to be somewhat balanced out. I was afraid mounting them too close to the edge might incur more risk of damage from branches. I probably over think things too much.

I ended up making my own brackets which sit a little higher than normal so I could clear one bathroom vent. That raised them a little more than some which also helps just a bit with shadows. The brackets would give me the ability if ever needed to tilt them (doubt I will) and get access under them if needed.

For sure shadows can be a bad thing, especially if you are close on solar sizing.

I hope anyone that comes across this and is looking at building their own system or even having one installed by someone else will take the time to read through the links I included for some very good reference information. There seems to be a lot of installations that aren't done well and under-perform for various reasons.

This was a fun project and I'm looking forward to seeing the results of it.

I still have some more lights to trade out for LED's and I want to install a couple more 12v outlets then eventually a medium sized inverter. Bur for now I spent enough 🙂

[Rice]

Heap64, it sounds like you put some thought into the panel placement. I brought it up because of the (possibly deceptive) photo, and now would be a better time to move it than later. Plus, if you're up north, shadows from items installed near panels can be more of an issue.

But if you did anything with an eye toward where you'd put any additional panels, I trust you. 🙂 And anyone with a battery box that beautiful, well...

Way too many times I've been poking around photos of installations and see panels right next to an air conditioner unit, or placed where they'll be under a raised batwing TV antenna. And a not insignificant number of them are by professional installers, and it's not like that was the ONLY place you could possibly put the panel. Drives me crazy.

Maybe someone planning solar will see your photo and think, "That looks perfect," see my post and think, "Oh wait, there might be a problem," and see your reply and think, "Oh, okay." And, most important, think, "I should make sure I don't have any shadows."

[2oldman]

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

yep

[Heap64]

Rice wrote:
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?

I think partially it could be the angle of the photo. The center panel is setback almost the same amount as the others are to the side of the vent cover. I wanted to try to leave enough room if I felt I needed another panel I could add one behind the middle panel and in front of the A/C unit.

All 5 panels are wired in parallel which should help limit how much shading on any one panel would effect the system. I decided to put all 5 panels near the front of the trailer as more often than not it seems we back into spots with trees. I decided to error on the side of more panels than I thought I would need since we would rather park in more shady spots.