We’ve all seen these guys with 1,000,000 watts of RV Photo voltaic panels on their roof, and 30 batteries within the stomach of their camper boasting how they will run each of their AC items and an air fryer whereas they watch TV of their rig. This text isn’t about a kind of techniques, I’m not that man.
My Spouse and I’ve been dwelling on the highway full time in our RV for a few yr now. Once we first obtained began we had extra kinks to work out of our system than we thought we did, and spent most of our time bleeding cash in gasoline and campground prices.
We tried our hand at Boondocking at a Harvest Hosts one night time, and at 2 a.m. the low battery alarm began going off. Hell we didn’t even make it sooner or later, we left our campground with full hookups at 9 a.m., obtained there at midday, and 14 hours had no juice left.
Nicely now we have to work out a strategy to preserve sufficient cost within the batteries in order that I would be capable to sleep till dawn. We hadn’t finished ANY analysis in any respect on RV Photo voltaic, however then I got here throughout the 400 Watt RV Photo voltaic Equipment from Renogy.
It appeared to have all the pieces we wanted to throw some panels on the roof, and preserve our batteries charged sufficient to have the ability to use the lights within the kitchen and preserve our low battery alarm from going off, so we ordered it.
We ordered it from Amazon, and it confirmed up at my buddies home in 3 days, and it did include ALMOST all the pieces we wanted to finish the set up. The one issues it didn’t include was the roof sealant, and a move by means of for the wires to go from the roof down and into the RV, however we ordered these as properly, so now we have been able to go.
You may watch my quick Set up video right here: Renogy RV Photo voltaic Equipment Set up
The RV Photo voltaic package from Renogy comes with 4 100 Watt Photo voltaic Panels, a 10 amp inline fuse, panel combiner plugs, cables to go from the roof to the cost controller, a 40 amp MPPT Cost Controller, a Battery fuse, a Bluetooth antennae so you’ll be able to monitor your energy manufacturing with an App in your cellphone, and cables to go from the controller to your batteries.
The instructions for set up have been fairly straight ahead, besides how the panels themselves ought to be wired collectively on the roof. There are a number of choices for placing them collectively, and I’ll admit I did it ‘Fallacious’ the primary time. With photo voltaic panels you could have the choice of wiring them in Sequence, Parallel, and Sequence-Parallel.
Wanting on the components readily available, and the included combiner plugs, I assumed they wanted to be wired in Parallel. Which is when all of the Optimistic cables tie collectively, and all of the Detrimental cables tie collectively, then go all the way down to the Cost Controller. If you wire them this fashion, all the Amperage from every Panel is added collectively, and on a full Solar day, will pop the ten amp fuse.
I replaced the fuse, and rewired them in Sequence, Optimistic to Detrimental, Optimistic to Detrimental, Optimistic to Detrimental, Optimistic to Detrimental, then all the way down to the Cost Controller and all the pieces began working completely.
We had 200 amp hours of normal previous Deep Cycle Lead Acid batteries from the manufacturing unit, so we figured that ought to be sufficient storage to maintain us going. We’ve got a residential fridge in our RV that runs off a 1,500 Watt Energy inverter that auto switches ON once we unplug the RV at a campground.
IF we ONLY use the 12 volt lighting, and go away the fridge working like regular, the photo voltaic will cost our batteries through the day on a decently Sunny web site, and get us by means of the night time with no battery alarms. Realistically that’s all I used to be in search of, so it was doing what it wanted to do, and will get us off grid often sufficient that I WOULD spend the cash on it once more if we have been to do it another time.
Referring to that topic, of If we had it to do over once more, There are issues I might do in another way, like altering out the batteries, and searching into how you can dimension the system to get a sure variety of hours out of it. BUT…
Based mostly solely on, whether or not or not this method carried out as I imagined it could, Sure, it did.
The package got here with most all the pieces wanted for the set up, It does cost the batteries through the day, and the set up was straight ahead. In case you are in search of a straightforward RV Photo voltaic possibility, that may get you off grid for the weekend with out a number of difficult math, that is it. Simply be sure to get the roof sealant, and a move by means of, and it couldn’t harm to seize a spare fuse to throw in a junk drawer simply in case.
Keep tuned for my observe up article on evaluating our RV Photo voltaic vs Generator, and how you can dimension an RV Photo voltaic System to get you thru a complete day of clouds and rain.