I was in need of a way to charge up my batteries as I wanted to do more boondocking then staying in campsites. I purchased a suitcase solar panel that I think was 80w . It did an pretty good job but needed to move and run cables to it. This year I decided to put some on the roof as my son bought a trailer with that setup on it. Some amazon shopping and some google searches I thought a couple 100 w panels would be good start. I seen that a local battery place sold panels and went there to compare which of course he would not compete with amazon but offered me what he said was a 180 w 24 volt panel, he quickly explained how it would actually perform better then 2 100w 12v. So I bought the kit and put it on. After getting it I realized how large it was and having a big 5th wheel I didn't think it would be a problem. Big 5th wheel has a lot of junk on the roof so I ended up having to install it a bit farther back then I wanted to so the wires are quite long. It came with 20ft of 10g and I added another 16ft or so to that I believe. Got it hooked up and it seems to work. Spent a week of grid and had not issues with power, need to learn water conservation or more trips to town for refill.
The invoice list
60 Cell 315w Mono Solar Module 39"x 65"
40 ft MC4 Cable 10AWG
20A 12v/24v MPPT controller 100v input
Turns out the 40ft cables were 2 20ft cables.
I also install a 2000w inverter and ran a cable inside and mad one plug 120v to run a cpap and maybe the tv if we wanted to.
I ran the cables down one of the tank vents so that went well and didn't have to try to get down in a wall. If I would have went with 2 smaller panels I would have had a lot less wire but not sure how much it matters. I suppose with this I might get shade on some of it from the A/C at times but it really did work well and we were in the mountains middle of Sept with not a lot of sun.
I did not get the remote screen for the unit yet but after more research I was wondering if it would be more valuable to purchase a battery monitor gauge to keep an eye on the battery condition.
The invoice list
60 Cell 315w Mono Solar Module 39"x 65"
40 ft MC4 Cable 10AWG
20A 12v/24v MPPT controller 100v input
Turns out the 40ft cables were 2 20ft cables.
I also install a 2000w inverter and ran a cable inside and mad one plug 120v to run a cpap and maybe the tv if we wanted to.
I ran the cables down one of the tank vents so that went well and didn't have to try to get down in a wall. If I would have went with 2 smaller panels I would have had a lot less wire but not sure how much it matters. I suppose with this I might get shade on some of it from the A/C at times but it really did work well and we were in the mountains middle of Sept with not a lot of sun.
I did not get the remote screen for the unit yet but after more research I was wondering if it would be more valuable to purchase a battery monitor gauge to keep an eye on the battery condition.
