CargoCamper612
New Member
- Joined
- Nov 3, 2019
- Messages
- 3
My wife and I spent about a year and a half converting a 6x12 cargo trailer into our own camper mostly for boondock camping but we did add an A/C with heat strip for powered sites on road trips or when we decide to lug a small generator along. We mostly camp when the weather is nice and prefer not to have the sounds of a generator going in the background so I knew solar would be a must. No inverter as of yet so our needs would be pretty small having to run lights, Maxxair fan, and keep our Dometic running for a long weekend. I decided to go with 3 100 watt panels from Renogy and grabbed their 40 amp Rover MPPT in case I decided to add another panel at a later date. It’s a bit overkill for our needs right now but I only need a few hours of sun to top the battery off each day.
I took the trailer back to the manufacturer for a door replacement and while I was there I got to talking to them about custom ladder racks for the roof. They were able to weld me up a set of 4 that put the cross bars much closer to the roof than their standard racks and the worked great for mounting all 3 panels along the back of the trailer. I ended up with for total cross bars and the additional bars towards the front made a great mount for out awning.
I mounted up two cheap meters from Amazon. The top one monitors all power coming into the battery (solar and power converter when plugged into shore power) and the bottom is power going out. These are super handy as I can see how much power is coming into the battery from either source or both by either cutting the breaker from the converter or cutting the breaker to to solar. It also shows watt hours so with some quick math I can see how much of my battery capacity I have used.
The Rover is mounted in the closet in the front of the trailer (No door so it has good air flow). I have a 10amp breaker from the panels to the charge controller and a 40amp breaker from the charge controller to the battery. I put breakers on both sides so I can easily de-energize for messing with any electrical and also to see what my converter is putting into the battery when plugged in.
So far this 12v AGM from Sam’s club has been working great for us. It has a 105ah capacity and they had a killer sale going when we bought it so it was a no brainer. Of course we want to go to lithium some day but this has been great for our needs so far. We don’t have any large loads and this has been more than enough to power what we have so far.
Please feel free to ask any questions or give any input!
I took the trailer back to the manufacturer for a door replacement and while I was there I got to talking to them about custom ladder racks for the roof. They were able to weld me up a set of 4 that put the cross bars much closer to the roof than their standard racks and the worked great for mounting all 3 panels along the back of the trailer. I ended up with for total cross bars and the additional bars towards the front made a great mount for out awning.
I mounted up two cheap meters from Amazon. The top one monitors all power coming into the battery (solar and power converter when plugged into shore power) and the bottom is power going out. These are super handy as I can see how much power is coming into the battery from either source or both by either cutting the breaker from the converter or cutting the breaker to to solar. It also shows watt hours so with some quick math I can see how much of my battery capacity I have used.
The Rover is mounted in the closet in the front of the trailer (No door so it has good air flow). I have a 10amp breaker from the panels to the charge controller and a 40amp breaker from the charge controller to the battery. I put breakers on both sides so I can easily de-energize for messing with any electrical and also to see what my converter is putting into the battery when plugged in.
So far this 12v AGM from Sam’s club has been working great for us. It has a 105ah capacity and they had a killer sale going when we bought it so it was a no brainer. Of course we want to go to lithium some day but this has been great for our needs so far. We don’t have any large loads and this has been more than enough to power what we have so far.
Please feel free to ask any questions or give any input!
