RV Solar Panels for Beginners
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 14 ต.ค. 2024
- Hey there, fellow RV enthusiasts! On our last Follow the Sun video, we boondocked with only our lithium batteries. This is our RV Solar Panels for Beginners voyage since we finally got our panels installed! Get ready to join us on our very first boondocking escapade with our trusty Grand Design 5th wheel, all juiced up with fancy lithium batteries and solar panels! We're diving headfirst into the adventure, sharing all the fun (and not-so-fun) stuff that happens when you're a newbie on the road. Yep, we're spillin' the beans on our rookie mistakes and celebrating our wins, too! Huge shoutout to @SoftStartUSA #SoftStartRVSolar for hooking us up and making us #FollowTheSun ambassadors. Thank you to @RVelectricity for all of your help with the install! Stick around, hit that subscribe button, and let's roll together through the highs and lows of RV life! Can't wait to share the ride with you! If you would like to check out the same all in one solar package that we have, please click the link below.
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🔗 Useful Links:
SoftStartUpSolar: softstartrvsol...
SoftStartUp: softstartup.co...
Channels mentioned:
@SoftStartUSA
@RVelectricity
@RenogySolar
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🔗 Useful Links:
SoftStartUpSolar: softstartrvsol...
SoftStartUp: softstartup.co...
We hope you enjoy this video and that it inspires you to keep your adventures going! Happy camping and safe travels from our RV family to yours! Thanks for watching!
✌🏼Mike and Shelley💙
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What do you think of this solar set up?
Cool, but it looks like you might want to add a little more solar if you want to reduce or eliminate your generator usage, especially with a residential fridge. A couple more batteries wouldn't hurt either to power that fridge, but you're off to a good start. We're retired FTers who discovered we love boondocking, so designed and built our off-grid electrical system ourselves, on a limited budget. It took us 5 years to gather the resources to finally complete the project. We're living this lifestyle off of a limited retirement income so had to take the low budget route, foregoing name brand components like Victron and Battleborn for more affordable options. However now that our system is finished, we are able to run our mini split heat pump 24/7 providing both A/C and heat powered by the sun.
We started by building a 620-watt liftable solar array on the side of our 1999 National Tropical MH. Our side array makes a nice bedroom window awning too, practically lifting itself with a couple gas struts, and it's easy to clean, standing safely on the ground. Lifting the array improves its efficiency 20-30%, so it performs more like a 750-800w horizontally mounted array, especially in the winter when the sun is lower in the sky.
Next, we built a 12v, 560ah LiFePo-4 battery using 8, 280ah prismatic cells and a Heltec 330amp (1,200a surge) BMS to start our generator. These cells fit perfectly under the steps of our MH where our old pair of golf cart batteries used to reside. We insulated the battery compartment, cut a small hole in our step risers and installed a tiny computer CPU fan to keep this space at close to room temperature, so we don't have to worry about the BMS shutting down charging due to low temperature - or their life reduced from getting too hot. Our 12v system uses an 80A Lithium converter/charger, a 1,000w Renogy inverter, a 50a Epever MPPT charge controller and a Lnex battery monitor. All this cost us under $3,500 and meets all our off-grid electrical needs except for our air conditioning, and microwave.
By mounting the solar array on the side of our coach, we left the roof free to rack 8, 550w solar panels down the length of our 35ft Class A, 15" off the roof, above our AC, vents, etc. It shades our entire roof, allowing plenty of cooling air underneath, increasing solar output and reducing the heat load on the air conditioners. Our 4,400w array can run both our A/Cs, our household appliances and charge our batteries from solar at the same time, even in winter. We mounted a Sungold Power all-in-one 48V, 5,000W Inverter/100A charge controller/battery charger, breakers and another Lnex battery monitor on the wall in our bedroom, saving us space as well as money compared to a system built with individual components. This high voltage system performs very well in low light, real world conditions. A few days ago, it rained all day, but our high voltage (400voc) array was still producing over 1,500 watts or around 35% of its rated capacity even in the rain, keeping our battery topped up.
Our 48v battery uses 16, 320ah prismatic cells and a 200amp Heltec BMS to keep it safe. Together with our 560ah 12v bank, we have a total of 23.5 kwh of batteries onboard (the equivalent of 18, 100ah Renogy batteries like you have) - kept charged by 5,020 watts of solar. The price of Lithium batteries has dropped quite a bit over the last few years. Our first 7.1kwh battery cost us $1,569 or $221/kwh, however the 16.4kwh we bought last November only cost $1,726 or $105/kwh.
We removed our old rooftop bedroom A/C and replaced it with an EG4 28.5 seer-2, 12k btu mini-split heat pump on the upper rear of our motorhome. It's super quiet and cools as well as our 14.5k btu soft start equipped Furrion we have up front, but only draws about 1/3rd the power. Our total budget for both 12v and 48v systems was around $11,500, including the $1,500 high-efficiency heat pump. We have no need to hook-up to power pedestals or run our generator anymore, as we run everything in our MH strictly off the sun.
We travel around the country a lot, visiting National Parks, and doing the tourist thing, mostly boondocking out west. We spent last winter boondocking in Yuma, AZ, but we're visiting our son in NC now, where boondocking places are pretty rare. We found an RV park that is letting us camp in a spacious site without hook-ups for only $100/mo., saving us $500/mo. off their FHU rates. Take care. I hope to see you down the road one day.
Nice to see the solar working, seems like a learning curve. Can not wait and see it in full sunlight.
We can’t wait for our big trip coming up so we can stretch her legs! Thanks for watching and commenting! We appreciate you!!
Love the progress guys! It's a journey, isn't it? Can't wait to see how you it goes and how you like it all. Now, you gotta come boondock with us out West!
Oh that’s going to happen eventually! We will be doing some boondocking next month on our trip in New England!
Glad you’re figuring it out. I’m sure this will help others! ❤ Happy camping!!
Thank you! It’s a learning curve for sure! Hope your adventures are going well!
Don’t worry its a learning experience every step of the way but you will get it👍, as long as you can make coffee and Shelly can dry her hair you’re golden.
We will figure it out sooner or later. I’ll just keep picking your brain, Shelley’s hair can do whatever it wants as long as I get coffee. Lol
Looks like a great setup guys! I really like how it calculates how much reserve in the batteries. We always have the generator ready as well. We almost always need it.
Yeah I don’t know how people make it boondocking without a generator. It’s a lifesaver!
Happy to see the final product! You’ll get the hang of the system. You said it all COFFEE!
Yes that is how we measured success on this trip! Just screwed up with the fridge. The generator saved us! lol. Thanks for your support as always!
We found out on our first RV Grand Design Imagine XLS 22mle, to just turn off the fridge and it will stay cold for a good 6 to 7 hours. The ice cream gets a little soft but still frozen after 7 hrs. We save 40% of our battery. I am going to upgrade to 200ah of lithium. We don’t boondock much, but we may start overnighting in Walmart when I retire and go out west. Great video!
We have 200ah lithium now. Our fridge is very inefficient. We’ve learned to use the propane.
That looks great guys, good job, thanks for sharing. Thumbs up 👍. Cheers Joe 😊
Thank Joe! Good to hear from you! Safe travels! - Mike and Shelley
You bet, my pleasure. You as well. See you on the next one. Cheers Joe 😊
Learning what you can and can't do when you have solar is definitely an experience. We tried to run our refrigerator at night time on ours too. It didn't work for us either. 😅 We have decided we definitely need two more panels. And another battery . Thank goodness for the generator Lynn and Danny. 😅
Yeah the generator proves to be a lifesaver! Thanks for your support as always!
NIce video, Great share
Thank you so much!
WOW 😮..I would most certainly be a Solar Newbie but you can guarantee that I'd become an expert real quick in order to get my morning ☕..😂😂... Yeah I can see y'all getting a 📚 published called "How to cure Solar Hiccups" .. Volume 1..😂😂 Thanks for sharing ❤😊
You know it! Can’t live without coffee! ☕️
Liked and subscribed! Thanks!
Thank you! We appreciate it!
We just added to our "Boondocking" arsenal and got ourselves a new solar power station. Not going to add panels to the roof or an inverter because we plan on upgrading our camper in 2-3 years. Video coming soon on our new power station.
It is a speedy upgrade for sure. If you are going to swap out the trailer soon it’s probably best to wait. We don’t have a power station yet but it’s on the list. Can’t wait to see you guys. It’s been too long. Stay safe out there.
@@campinwiththeconfers see you (yeah, just me Shawn again, lol) next week!
Is your phone paired to the camper. I use the One Control app for my camper. Mine is a 2023 so it might be different. I do know my charge controller doesn’t work, it won’t turn on. My battery went down to 11.6v going to our campground 2 hours away, cooling the 12v fridge. Now my battery on a charge maintainer won’t charge past 72% when hooked to the camper. I think the fridge is using more than the float voltage. Campers Inn says it turns on only if you are not connected to the shore power. I call BS. Taking it in next week to get that and my ground control fixed under warranty. They won’t raise my rear levels up a screw hole. I bent a foot scraping the gutter of a gas station. They say it is the manufacturer recommended setting. I shouldn’t scrape, I beg to differ. Great video!
We are blue toothed but it doesn’t seem to be realtime for some reason. I’m still trying to figure that on out.
Dealers are the worst I think. They seem to make a lot of excuses to get out of doing the work. Smh
Solar can be as simple as you want it, or as complicated as you want 🤣 We're just starting to dip our toes into that pond as well. The app on your phone may not be set up for the correct battery type. I had to change mine on the Renogy app
Good to know. Thanks!
Yes give us all the tips lol
We will do our best!
In terms of the battery state-of-charge indicator (X% full), no voltage-based state-of-charge display will work with LiFePO4. The reason is that LiFePO4 has a very, very flat charge and discharge curve and a lot of hysteresis between the charge and discharge curve. That makes it more or less impossible to figure out the state of charge based on the resting voltage until the battery is literally 95%+ full or almost empty (10% or lower). Everything in-between... you just can't tell.
So the only way to track the state of charge is with a shunt that counts amp-hours in and amp-hours out. The shunt is configured with the battery's capacity, resets to 100% above a certain configured voltage "battery full voltage", and tracks amp-hours the rest of the time to tell you what the state of charge is.
-Matt
You sound like someone I need to sit at the fire and talk to. Most of what you explained in your two comments I don’t understand. This is our first experience with solar so I know very little. It’s has been a learning experience for us for sure.
So, when it comes to a fridge... if it runs off of AC, the idle power consumption of the inverter can be a huge problem. Not sure but that Renogy inverter is probably not gonna be the most efficient thing in the world.
For example, a full-sized residential fridge might consume an average of, say, 60W (0W when cycled off, 200W when cycled on, etc). But if the inverter has a 40W overhead, your solar panels have to deliver 100W x 24hrs = 2.4 kWh/day of energy to keep everything going.
A typical 100W solar panel can produce 0.5 kWh/day in sunny weather and 0.2 kWh/day in cloudy weather. So you are looking at roughly 1000W worth of solar panels to cover your consumption through cloudy days.
A Fridge that runs off of DC would be able to operate without the inverter overhead, allowing the inverter to be turned off. Not sure exactly what your fridge is but dual-fuel fridges are not usually very efficient, so you might want to look into getting an electric-only fridge.
Alternatively, with an AC fridge, getting a better inverter, such as a Victron Multiplus-II whos inverter overhead is closer to 10W rather than 40W.
All of these inefficiencies add up. Its something you have to be constantly aware of when figuring out what you can power 24x7 and what you should only power as-needed.
But lets not focus on "replacing" equipment right now... lets focus on the best course of action to take by expanding the equipment you already have.
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Ultimately the first line of defense is to just keep piling on the solar panels and add more battery capacity as-needed. Solar panels are the #1 in importance. Battery capacity is #2. Battery capacity doesn't help you a whole lot if you don't have the energy to feed them with!
So my recommendation is #1 --- add more solar panels! And with regards to adding more solar panels, note that you are not limited to the MPPT inputs you currently have. You can always add additional MPPT charge controllers connected directly to your battery bank to handle more solar panels.
I would recommend adding more solar panels... 200W to 320W hard-framed panels would be my recommendation. Generally with two or three in series going into a charge controller (based on the voltage input range the charge controller can handle). Then replicate that as necessary (another two or three panels in series, and another charge controller, etc...). Avoid paralleling panels or strings.
For the charge controller, I recommend a Victron SmartSolar charge controller, but which amperage depends on the voltage of your battery system. 24V and 48V battery systems can make due with lower amperage charge controllers like the Victron 100/20 or the 150/35. But a 12V battery system needs bigger charge controllers, like the 100/50 (and so forth). "Smart Solar" version (bluetooth app access for configuration and monitoring) for all of them.
-Matt
See my other response. I have a ton to learn.
Thank you Confers. I’m going to look into this set up. I currently have one solar panel and a 12v fridge (it came with the ‘23 260RD) but I need my coffee in the morning and would rather not run the generator.
D
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