Thank you so much for having us on. The team here at the NRVTA and Big Beard Batteries are taking great care of us on the solar install. We can't wait to try it out.
Thanks for your tech tips. My question is when the rv says solar ready what does that mean. I see the plug on the side of my 5th wheel and the wires go to I think a bus bar what would I need to hook up to the 5th wheel or would it be better to just use the alligator clips with a portable solar panel.
Im just starting my solar journey on my travel trailer , it currently has an onboard generator but i want a seamless experience, being able to use the a/c on solar but allow the generator to start itself if needed while I'm out riding or whatever
I put 8, 550-watt solar panels (4,400 watts) on the roof of my 35ft motorhome and built a 620-watt liftable array on the side over my bedroom window for a total of 5,020 watts of solar. The secret is to rack large residential panels over all your roof protrusions like A/C shrouds, vents, skylights, etc.. This eliminates any shade from these items on your panels. This also allows plenty of cooling air to flow underneath them cooling both your panels, for higher solar production and shades your roof, so there is less load on your A/Cs. A person with a 42ft or bigger coach or fiver could fit 2 more 550-watt panels on the roof for 5,500 total watts without any special tricks like side mounted arrays, sliding rooftop panels or solar awnings. I just replaced the old Dometic propane fridge in mine with a residential fridge, even though I live off-grid almost exclusively, as I have solar power to spare as well as 23.5kwh of batteries consisting of a 16.4kwh 48v battery and a 7.1kwh 12v battery. The best way to calculate how much power your fridge uses, which takes into account its duty cycle, is to look at the yellow energy star tag that comes with each new fridge. Mine draws 345kwh/yr. divided by 365 days is 945 watt/hrs./day. Rounding to 1kwh/day works for me. If I generously estimate it will consume 1/2 of this power at night that's only .5kwh a night my fridge will draw. We also run our EG-4 mini split heat pump all night, almost every night. It averages around 32ah or 10% of our 48v battery to run all night, so I'll round up to 1.7kwh/night. So, I need 2.2kwh to run these 2 appliances overnight off of my 16.4kwh 48v battery, giving me power to spare for other uses, as my solar array always charges the battery at or near 100% capacity at sundown, even in the winter and on overcast or rainy days.
My wife and I HATE our 12v fridge. We'd love to go back to our old RV with the propane fridge. Sure, I can spend thousands of dollars for solar panels and batteries to overcome this but why when there was already a better and cheaper option. Seems like the entire market is going 12v and residential. I think that is a huge mistake.
Hey Dustin and Leslie! Haven’t seen you for a while. We are running 395 south, from Pendleton, Or. to Barstow,, Ca. Heading back to the quartzsite desert for the winter. Happy to see you add some solar. We love ours. It will open new places up for adventure. I’m really thinking of doing the repair course there, with Todd. Have they approved veterans school benefits yet? That’s what I’m waiting for.
So (newbie to solar anything), if I wanted to just unplug my 30amp generator input cable (runs everything ok) and plug in the Rv 30amp connector from a solar setup, what would be needed to run AC for 3 hours a day, run a few lights and microwave for 20 minutes, and be able to recharge batteries? I’m thinking of buying a 4500 watt nominal inverter, I’ve got 2 100 amp hour batteries? Make any sense? Thank you, Rollo
I figure you need 2 to 3 times what you think you need as you could end up with no solar for several days in a row. I have a 6.5kWh inverter and 8 415w panels feeding (for now) 2 5.12kWh batteries. I plan on having around 30kWh in batteries when i can afford more of them.
@@chrisschiel6741 try angling the panels, made a huge difference on mine. Cloudy yesterday I made 1.826kWh. Already a third of the day I I have 2.4kWh. Before I angled the panels I didnt get more than 1 or 2 kWh all day on bright sunny days. I doubled power by angling them.
I have 460mah lipo in my tiffin. Residential fridge. I run furnace, TV, wifi, Lights, charge phones. And I'm at 75% to 80% full in the morning? I do not see how 1 fridge would pull that much every hour.
I have 400 watts of solar and 2 deep cycle 150 AH batteries. Drawing between 225 and 325 watts, my batteries discharge to 50% in less than 10 minutes. Everything is less than 6 months old. Any ideas what might be wrong? Feedback from anyone would be most welcome. (by my math, I should be able to run that load for about 6 hours before getting to 50% without any solar input)
Why does nobody mention that the solar panels are so inefficient that if you put 2000 watts of solar and the sun is not directly over each one of them. Your lucky if you get half that in wattage. If you run in series, (which is the usual way) if one panel is in the shade and only gets half its rated wattage, that will reduce the rest of the by half also. All I hear is if you need 2000 watts of energy, you need 2000 watts of solar. NOT!!! You need to at least double the solar wattage you need.
