diy solar

diy solar

New to Forum... looking for advice.

DangerDarrell

New Member
Joined
Nov 12, 2022
Messages
7
Hello peeps new to "The world of Will". I have zseen all the videos but I'm getting there. I purchased a 1993 Fleetwood Southwind for the porpoise of living in and traveling. I have no electricity knowledge of any kind other than I don't touch two wires at a time EVER. My start has been a purchase of a AmperTime server rack 48v 100amp battery and two Renogy 100w panels (purchasing enough to cover the roof of the 32 footer). So my questions are? What do I need next?? ? charge controller/inverter? And DC to DC for 48 to 12volt? The only reason I picked the Battery was I thought best bang for Buck. It was 1300 including tax and shipping to my door. I have another 2k to spend for the rest?
Any help would be appreciated. Thank you all. Appreciate everyone! Tanks DD
 
Welcome.

Yes, you will need an inverter. The size of the inverter depends on what you want to run on it. Generally i would buy the biggest one youd ever need up front, but it might eat a slight majority of your remaining budget and as time2roll mentioned, you need more panels both in terms of total watts, and in terms of getting their combined voltage, when wired in series, to be well above 48 volts AND above the ‘minimum mppt voltage’ of whatever solar controller you end up with, whether standalone or built into your inverter.

So, what do you want to be able to power off this inverter? The biggie is trying to run an existing (inefficient) rooftop ac. Everything short of that including a microwave or even a space heater (or a MUCH preferable mini split ac!) is notably easier.
 
You start over and hope you haven't made a mistake.

Define your needs. Design a system. Buy stuff to build the design.

 
Excellent you know to deal with a single wire at a time... but remember, in a vehicle... the vehicle IS A WIRE... so be careful handling the positive wire.

I will guess your rv has a 50A hookup?

48V is unusual for rv'ers to start with, but makes for an excellent setup once hurdles are passed...

For instance... those two panels won't charge a 48V battery... you will need at least one more.
 
OK shoot maybe I shouldn't have picked the AT server rack? 48 volts only cuz it seemed like the most amount of power for the cost. All I want is power for when I'm not hooked to grid and I'm 30amp RV @Supervstech. I would like to have Internet and Cameras on all corners. I did the rack so it could be placed inside the RV under the couch. I like the option to pack up and hit the road at a moments notice. To run both AC units in summer and plenty of heat in the winter all without relying on being hooked to shore power. I know nothing of 48V I was listening to YouTube and what I was reading. Any way thanks for the welcome..
 
Thank you for the comments . Yes I purchased the panels before the Battery. Would I be better getting 48 volt panels and using the 12s for another setup? I was hoping to be able to run both inefficient ACs kinda sounds like I should have saved money for a mini split and ditching the big berthas on top. I may have been a little hasty and jumped the gun on the Battery? Hmm more research and questions I will ask. Thanks
 
A/C on solar for an extended period may realistically require closer to 2,000 to 3,500+ watts solar.
200 watts is good for lights, propane fridge, water pump. Maybe a small tv or laptop.
 
Used commercial panels. Check Santan Solar, and other vendors which may advertise on eBay and Craigslist.

Look through the forum, some pictures of peoples RV roof covered in panels.
 
Would I be better getting 48 volt panels and using the 12s for another setup?
I would stop thinking about panel voltage (for now) and get as many watts, using as big of panels that will fit on your roof as you can.

Then, come back with the panel specs and the number of panels and we can do a sanity check to see if there is a good SCC solution to work with your 48V battery.

Someone here mentioned he shopped for panels and made cardboard cutouts of the different panel sizes he was considering. Went up on the RV roof and masked off where he could place them for maximum wattage. Others do it with software.
 
And the SCC especially must support voltage of the series/parallel PV array.
Some accept 100Voc, 145, 150, and higher. Cost per watt vary, so planning PV array and SCC together is the thing to do.
 
OK shoot maybe I shouldn't have picked the AT server rack? 48 volts only cuz it seemed like the most amount of power for the cost. All I want is power for when I'm not hooked to grid and I'm 30amp RV @Supervstech. I would like to have Internet and Cameras on all corners. I did the rack so it could be placed inside the RV under the couch. I like the option to pack up and hit the road at a moments notice. To run both AC units in summer and plenty of heat in the winter all without relying on being hooked to shore power. I know nothing of 48V I was listening to YouTube and what I was reading. Any way thanks for the welcome..
48V is good if you wanna run the ac, but you will need a lot of solar to keep them going. Likely another battery as well.
 
Unless you can fit 4000w of panels on your RV roof, it is probably unrealistic to ever leave both rooftop ACs running for very long, unless a generator or shore power were involved.

You can almost certainly run one of them basically 'for free' (supported mostly or entirely by solar, most of the time, during certain times of day) once you've maxed out your rooftop real estate with solar panels.

Even if running AC isn't your TOP priority i feel it should be addressed first because it's the most strenuous thing the system will probably do (not planning to run an electric clothes drier, are you?!) and also one of the things you might be the most let down about if you just assume it's going to work and it doesn't. So in my opinion, temper your expectations to run both units off solar. It probably can't happen unless you have 'deployable' solar you can lay on the ground. You can probably run one comfortably AFTER filling most of your roof with solar panels, and you can probably run both if you design the system in such a way that one can run off solar and the other can run for a short while off battery to cool the space before returning to a single unit running, or the other could run off generator or shore power instead of your solar/inverter/battery system.

If you EVER wanted to run both off of the inverter, you would need a pretty large inverter (such as a 5000w+) and would have to start them individually as their compressor startup surge is large enough that most single inverters other than the huge 12-15000w models, could not handle 2 at once, nor could your single battery. Starting them one at a time would get around it for a while.. because both compressors would run continuously at first. Once they get close to the temp setting and their compressors start 'cycling' on and off it becomes a crapshoot because there is always a chance they will both try to restart simultaneously and overload the system.

So you may just choose to never attempt to run both off of an inverter simultaneously, which would simplify your inverter shopping quite a bit. There are ways to wire things such that one of the the units could run from inverter, or generator, or shore, or only 2 of those, or only 1. Or, you could install a smaller window unit, or mini split, and only run the big rooftop units off shore power or to initially cool the space before switching to the smaller units. Up to you how you want to play that, eventually.

So, before you can go inverter shopping you need to decide "do i EVER intend to run both units off of an inverter, with full knowledge of the bag of issues i'd have to manage?". If yes, we can start talking about inverters that can do that. If no, we can start talking about some other inverters.

As far as which solar panels to buy.. 100w panels are typically '12v' panels which means you will be limited to using them in series strings of no less than 4. So unless you stop with the 2 you have and buy a particular 'voltage boost mppt' to run those two, and then switch to something else, you'd have to at least pony up for 2 more matching panels before you could switch gears to buying other panels, if you wanted to. Reasons TO switch to larger panels: cheaper per watt, more likely to be found used at a heavy discount, less total wiring and mounting connections to make. Reasons NOT to run larger panels: Harder to maximize your roof utilization because big panels can only fit certain ways in certain spaces, smaller ones give more opportunities for "tetris" filling up all your empty spaces with panels.

Ok, i'll stop there until you answer that AC question. :)
 
Well, you are making the classic newbie mistakes, purchasing stuff before you have any understanding of what you need. As SSE states, start with a plan. Know what power you need to run what you want first, to incorporate that into the design.

I can tell you right off the bat that 100W panels are a waste of money, and that you'll be adding solar in far larger increments then 100W at a time. You get far more W/$ with grid-tie panels, cheapest on Craigslist with local pickup.
 
I can tell you right off the bat that 100W panels are a waste of money, and that you'll be adding solar in far larger increments then 100W at a time. You get far more W/$ with grid-tie panels, cheapest on Craigslist with local pickup.
Unfortunately I gotta disagree with you there because of the fact that it's a motor home and the 100w panels are MUCH easier to place and have MUCH higher watts/sq-inch than used grid tie panels. From what I've been able to find when it comes to physically smaller panels and only needing a few the 100-200w panels on Amazon are the best option because of the immense shipping costs of panels.

If it was 10 acres of ground mount and you needed 20+ panels then the used ones make a LOT more sense, but there's only so much you can do with an RV roof.

On another note, you're going to want at LEAST 4 panels in series to get the incoming voltage to stay high enough to actually charge that battery you've got. You might be able to squeeze it in 3 but you're going to need perfect sun to get to the 60+-ish volts you'll need to send to the charge controller to charge up that battery. Many 100w panels are only effective up t about 18v when actually working so 4 is the minimum to make sure you're regularly getting 60+ volts out of the string.
 
Unfortunately I gotta disagree with you there because of the fact that it's a motor home and the 100w panels are MUCH easier to place and have MUCH higher watts/sq-inch than used grid tie panels.

Since I don't actually have a trailer yet to which I've added solar, I guess I can't argue.

Actually, what I was thinking of was buying a pop-up for summer camping, and solar would be a given. I was expecting to use the same 250W panels I get for everything else. What I was thinking about was making a docking station, such when I park the trailer between trips, I run a power cable from the docking station holding the panels into the trailer, which would stay parked under the shed roof, in the shade. Then the trailer could stay in a protected area in shade, but stay fully charged. Then I might have a battery bank larger than what could be conveniently charged from the roof-top.
 
Actually, what I was thinking of was buying a pop-up for summer camping, and solar would be a given.
The motors on the pop-ups that I've dealt with are just barely powerful enough to lift up that roof assembly. You might want to think about the flexible panels (pricy/watt but MUCH lighter) and some sort of stand-off/rail system to keep them cool. If you tried to cover the whole thing in larger glass panels (or heaven forbid old grid-tie panels @ 40+lb each!) that motor would cry and scream and probably die after not too many lifts. This guy's got some good videos on mounting flexible panels a better way that still keeps them cool.


What I was thinking about was making a docking station, such when I park the trailer between trips, I run a power cable from the docking station holding the panels into the trailer, which would stay parked under the shed roof, in the shade. Then the trailer could stay in a protected area in shade, but stay fully charged. Then I might have a battery bank larger than what could be conveniently charged from the roof-top.
Because LFP batteries can't be charged in sub-freezing weather I would recommend just getting them up at 80% full or so when you park it and let them be. They can sit outside without draining themselves even at butt-nugget cold temps and still have most, if not all, of their charge when spring comes around. I did something similar on my brother's pop-up with a deployable array connection and 2 battery boxes. 1 box has the 200Ah LFP battery build inside and the main breaker, the other box has the SCC and the 50' extension cord with the MC4 connectors that plug into the panels that store under the dining room table when parked.

The last thing you want to do is head out in the spring and find that your battery got a charge over winter and destroyed itself, that would be a, and forgive the technical terminology here, a "Very Bad Thing".
 
Thank you all for your comments and support. I don't plan on running both AC units together. Just want enough power in the winter to run heaters and enough to run AC in summer along with internet, computers 1 laptop 1 desktop pc. 4 security cameras 24/7. I will get 2more of the 100wt panels so I have 4 of that I mix and the remaining panels I will map out. I figured I had room for 10 to 12 panels the size of the 100wt renogy. I will look for some higher wattage panels. Thanks yall will keep you posted.
 
Oh one more thing is the ampertime server rack 48v 90amphr ok just sitting in my garage over the winter not being used??
 
2000w solar won't be enough to run A/C. but what it can do is only run the generator every 4 hours for 4 hours or less during the day. it would do propane heater fine. no electric heat. I would suggest a All in one.... so it will have 120v to 48v charger, inverter and SCC .. would suggest a micro air soft start for the AC

48v is great so the amp draw will lower which is easier to deal with. 20 amp at 48v per 1000 watts (verse 80 amps at 12v)
 
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