Key West Solar: As a recap, this is the geeky version of how well our solar did while boondocking in Key West without outside electricity. Also covered is some detailed information on how we lived with limited water. The last part will introduce you to my supplemental water plan. We already covered the wonders of …
Smoky Mountain Vistas are amazing. We have had a wonderful visit. We spent the last twelve days camping off-grid in the Great Smoky Mountain National Park. Our stay in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park has made it easy to mix it up a little. At our current location, we get to enjoy both of …
Dry Camping twelve days on solar. Great Smoky Mountain National Park. Here are the results. Did our solar work for an extended camping period in the Great Smoky Mountain National Park? This is a numbers post — if you want the story about our wonderful visit to the Smoky Mountain National Park area here is …
Here is how solar electricity works. I could have started my RV solar series with this article or I could have avoided it entirely. Some of you might just trust the rest of us who say it works and leave it to that. I find it interesting to know how things work. I hope this …
The battery monitor is the missing critical part. The most important part of an RV solar install isn’t the panels, controller, or battery, it is the battery monitor. Every RV, with a battery, needs a battery monitor. This should be on every RV from the factory and I don’t know of any RVs that have …
Red Bay Makeover: Why go to Red Bay to remodel our RV? Why would we need to remodel our RV? Red Bay is the home of Tiffin Motorhomes. The people here have more experience with Tiffin Motorhomes than anywhere on earth. While here we performed our annual maintenance, fixed a few broken parts, and gave …
We have installed eighteen Zamp Obsidian solar panels to recharge our lithium battery. This article explains the wiring of the solar panels so that they act as one panel. This year, because our system is so much more complex, I am going to go into much more detail about wiring solar panels than I did …
You have too many solar panels! This should shed some light on our solar install. How did we design our RV solar and battery system? This was a comment in an email pertaining to our Zamp Obsidian Solar Install. The comment wasn’t as direct as my title statement and it was made with good intent. …
Can my new Zamp Obsidian solar array, and my “Massive Electric Bucket” eliminate my need for both external power hookups and running my generator? This year we will find out by personal experience. The installation is going well and these are the first pictures. If you missed the post about my battery, here is the …
Destructive Lithium Battery Testing — I guess I run with a pretty rough crowd, a friend of mine deliberately destroyed two lithium batteries while testing. He tested them to the point of failure. Smoke Check In the Navy, we used to call an electronic device that failed — smoke checking. If you hit a device …
Troubleshooting our Air Conditioner – I didn’t want to repair the air conditioner, I didn’t want it to break. If you own an RV (or any house) it will break. Here is how I fixed our RV air conditioner that broke as we left Las Vegas (where it worked just fine). This is not the …
Snippet: Lion Energy – manufactures one of my favorite RV products the Safari UT 1300 Lithium Iron Phosphate battery. They sell lots of products that are not just big batteries. I didn’t know how many different products this company offers to help people in their everyday life. You can see in the photo that I …
Air Conditioner from Solar and Batteries: Can you run your RV air conditioner from your battery and solar panels? The short answer is yes. We have proved that it is possible. This update includes testing data with some surprises. These surprises are not encouraging and show how hard this is and why this is so …
Air Conditioner from Solar and Batteries – Test Results Read More »
My goal is to be (electric) energy independent, this includes air conditioning on batteries and solar. I have not yet installed solar. I can now run air conditioning from my batteries. The process was easy enough, and I started with a huge advantage over less equipped RVs. I already had a very capable Magnum Inverter/ …
Micro-Air EasyStart… RV Air conditioners are hard to start. The Micro-Air EasyStart fixes that. I need EasyStart to run my AC from solar. For us, it is all part of our solar electrical remodel and is the way we are going to get our air conditioners to run from our batteries. Without this EasyStart, running …
Boondocking without solar, we have done that before but never have we done it this easily. Our battery system is holding us into the second day without recharging so it has met the design goal of two days without sunshine. We now have thirty days of off-grid camping (so far this summer) to prove that …
Ten Lithium Battery Myths and Answers: How can I get the longest life from lithium batteries? After you spend lots of money on lithium batteries you want them to last. It would be a shame if you killed them early. I have been an early fan but not an early adopter of lithium iron phosphate …
Massive Electric Bucket: What is an electric bucket? An “electric bucket” is my description of our battery remodel. (I will explain later) How did the battery remodel work? This post describes the real testing results while camping off-grid with our new battery remodel. How much energy did we consume? Did we achieve our design goal? …
We are creating a hybrid mongrel battery for our RV. The system will have lots of solar, and both lead-acid and lithium batteries. We are going to load up the RV with lots of lithium batteries and eventually put as much solar on the roof as possible. By the end of the week, the rough fit …
At the Xcapers 2020 BASH we took the opportunity to gather user inputs for our Solar Test Data Analysis. There were 400 RVs and no hookups for more than a week. These are the lessons learned. We gathered results from the Bash(ers), usually on a daily basis to see how our friends were able to …
As you know, the Xcapers Bash is 100% off-grid. Many RVs have solar to recharge RV batteries, some only have generators. This represents a huge opportunity to get same-day, same-weather, day-by-day electric data from hundreds of RV battery users – with and without solar recharging. Thanks for contributing to the Xcapers Bash Solar Data Collection. …
Which should be first, solar or lithium? My install could have been done, either way. There are good reasons to put in better batteries first and there are good reasons to install solar panels before upgrading the batteries. I learned lots of things that I wouldn’t know had I done both at the same time …
Portable solar panels are very popular with RVers. Do they work? How well do they work? When to use them and how best to use them? Did I need a portable solar panel? That is an interesting question. I have friends with portable panels and my brother uses a portable every time he camps. I …
Inverter/charger or Inverter & Charger each has some benefits. Separate also has some benefits. Which is better? Which would I choose? Inverters and chargers are actually two different items. Some manufacturers have built chargers into inverters and these units, depending on their design have some advantages over separate units. However, some inverter/charger combinations are not …
RV Solar Series: Inverter/charger or Inverter & Charger Read More »
RV Solar Series: 12 volts or 24 volts is a question the doesn’t get asked very often. The fact is that there are advantages to both configurations. Before we consider the advantages of each, we need some understanding of how multiple batteries work with each other. Volts and Amps math Battery banks can be assembled …
RV Solar Series: Inverters change Direct Current (battery power) to Alternating Current (house power) so that you can use house appliances inside your RV. Some RVs don’t have any inverters and some RVs have huge inverters. Some, (usually older) RVs don’t even have a battery (this is very rare). My RV has a small inverter, …
This is my Lithium/Lead Acid Final Analysis where the determination isn’t necessarily all data-driven. Live style makes a big difference in the end result conclusion on the Lead/Lithium debate is going to happen. One of the biggest problems with lead-acid is that they don’t like to give up electricity without a fight. Tell this to …
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Battery choice is a critical part of living with an RV solar battery charger. Battery design determines success or failure. The question comes down to Batteries Lead or Lithium. The first question that the RV Solar Series needs to address pertaining to batteries is that there are two types of batteries. Batteries that created to …
RV Solar Series: Limit of the design. Everything has limits. The limits I have are daily sunshine is required and battery size and type. Even though I met all the design goals, I need to have the sunshine every day. In the summertime, I will have much longer daylight periods to charge the battery. The efficiency …
RV Solar Series: How to use the Generator with Solar. The sun doesn’t shine every day so you can’t expect that solar is going to be your only power supply. My solar coupled with a bigger battery bank of the right kind of batteries could bridge multiple cloudy days and return to a full charge …
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RV Solar Series: Analysis & Conclusions is the summary to the testing page. The testing page has more meat and this page details what happened. I also offer theories as to what could have happened with different decisions. We are very happy with the results and look forward to more off-grid camping that will be …
RV Solar Series: Testing the System is not such an easy task and involves camping at various times a year without outside electricity. Testing in mid-winter will come at some later time. Testing in March is a good balance between summer and winter conditions. How did I get these numbers? The combination of our battery …
We have gathered data on electricity used in our RV and have compiled a solar report to analyze the actual results. We still have issues of understanding what is going on, but overall we are thrilled. Yesterday was the true test and we did really well. Data to follow. Starting last spring we monitored battery …
RV Solar Series: Installation of the panels is the easiest part aspect of installing a solar battery charger on your RV. My panels are installed on a fiberglass roof — your roofing materials and desires will change your installation techniques. Running wires from the panels to the location near the battery is the hardest part …
RV Solar Series: How to Design a Just – Right – System. A just-right size, not too small, not too costly. Sounds like Goldilocks. Just right. Start with simple and work to more complex. Start with a battery. Add to that a positive and negative wire that leads to a small solar collector. Connect …
RV Solar Series: How much solar did we need? My answer was 600-700 watts of solar installed flat, (700 installed) to recharge our battery and live daily. Given six hours of sunshine, (winter) assuming the batteries were not overly discharged we should be good. Part of the assumption was that you can’t always count on …
RV Solar Series: How we Store Electricity is a key consideration, almost all RVs have some kind of central battery. We wish we had the best battery. Nearly all RV manufacturers put the lowest cost battery in an RV, just to give it the minimum. Thankfully when we purchased our RV, the original battery had …
RV Solar Series: Quit wasting electricity. Turn it off, make it better. Measure to know where it goes. Change your location. Turn it off One of the things I first encountered before measuring my energy use was that I had no way to completely disconnect the battery from loads. There was a switch in the …
Electricity – 101 RV Solar Series: Understanding Electricity is not optional but is not a concern in every day modern life. What is electricity? Before you make a change to your RV electric system, you better understand at least the very basics of electricity. When you turn on a flashlight, you create a circuit. The …
Measure to know RV Solar Series: How to know what just-right means. How to know what just-right means in an RV solar system design. The answer is you have to measure to know what you need. How do you measure to determine what your needs are? This is a key step. Lots of folks put …
RV Solar Series: How to know what just-right means. Read More »
What time is it? Here let me show you how to build a watch. RV Solar Series: Introduction: RV Solar Series: Introduction: Our goal is that we can live without the need for outside electric and without running our generator. We are full-time travelers and a motor home is our preferred mode of travel. Last …
Departing the beach. Solar panels on the roof, kayaks on the car… Be in Bonita for one more week, then we turn east for our longest route ever. Our objective for 2019 includes almost every cowboy state and most of the entire Oregon and California coast. Our stay at San Onofre was very nice and …
