Whole trailer LED retrofit
All, For anyone considering doing an LED lamp retrofit in your unit, I will tell you... It can be easy, relatively inexpensive and worthwhile. We don't do much boondocking or running off our batte...
Forum Discussion
The cheap non regulated panels will not interfere with the TV. There is a possible drawback in that there have been a few (very) few panel failures reported due to what is thought to be excessive voltage.
It is hard to really say just how big a risk there is.
Over voltage would only happen when the converter is charging the batteries, and it would probably need to be in boost mode for it to get high enough to be a problem. This would have to happen while the lights were on as well. With all of the converters out there that don't go into boost mode, and that many boondockers use their generators only during daylight hours when the lights are less likely to be on.. Then that may be why so many people don't have this issue.
When I did mine, I found some cheap Chinese stand alone voltage regulators on ebay and converted my entire LED light circuits to 12 volt regulated circuits. This works great. No TV problems and the entire circuit stays right around 12 volts all the time. I used a 3 amp one for the living room and had to get a larger one (5 amps IIRCC) for the kitchen as that circuit also powers the stove fan which has a pretty high draw.
I went ahead and replaced the 15 amp fuses with new sizes to match the converters. The only downsides are that it is not a plug and play install and I cannot go back to non LEDs very easy. So I keep a couple of panels on hand. Never needed them yet.
It is hard to really say just how big a risk there is.
Over voltage would only happen when the converter is charging the batteries, and it would probably need to be in boost mode for it to get high enough to be a problem. This would have to happen while the lights were on as well. With all of the converters out there that don't go into boost mode, and that many boondockers use their generators only during daylight hours when the lights are less likely to be on.. Then that may be why so many people don't have this issue.
When I did mine, I found some cheap Chinese stand alone voltage regulators on ebay and converted my entire LED light circuits to 12 volt regulated circuits. This works great. No TV problems and the entire circuit stays right around 12 volts all the time. I used a 3 amp one for the living room and had to get a larger one (5 amps IIRCC) for the kitchen as that circuit also powers the stove fan which has a pretty high draw.
I went ahead and replaced the 15 amp fuses with new sizes to match the converters. The only downsides are that it is not a plug and play install and I cannot go back to non LEDs very easy. So I keep a couple of panels on hand. Never needed them yet.
