A Successful Budget Solar Setup

**Flip94ta** · 09-10-2020, 10:52 AM

First! Thank you to those on here and in the Facebook group that helped guide me though this.

We just returned from a 10 night trip out to the Rocky Mountain NP and Snowies/Medicine Bow NF in Wyoming. We only had an electrical hookup 1 of the 10 nights and we don’t own a generator. We stayed at elevation most of the trip so that negated the need for AC. We also have boondocked in a couple of parking lots in the past month as well.

Here are my components, most of these are very budget friendly and we haven’t had any hiccups or issues with them. I still have some tidying up and plastic conduit to run. All were purchased from Amazon or Costco.

4x 160 Watt Renology Mono panels, these are as big as you can fit on the 2500RL and still run wires down between the bedroom/bathroom wall. $177 each

Renology Z brackets, 24pcs, $50

WindyNation 10awg mc4 extension cable 30ft. $40

MC4 connectors and crimp tool $22

Eco worthy four string combiner box. $135

Entry Gland $12

WindyNation 6GA wire, red/black 25ft. $50

EPever Tracer 4210AN, with MT50 $185

Blue Sea 70a breaker for camper 12v $60

3/8 buss bars $40

2GA 12inch battery cables, 2 pair $28

Blue sea MRBF 200amp battery fuse, $40

Pair of Lion Energy UT1300 shipped from Costco. $1480

Tenyu auto fire extinguisher $50

Plywood and Hardiboard $30.

Duracell 3000watt modified sine wave from Costco, $220!!!!!

ATS transfer switch $80

All in about $3300.

I didn’t include the progressive EMS in this total because it’s not a solar component but I highly recommend it.

I decided on a parallel wiring setup given that we are based in Michigan and often have shade issues. This limits the Epever to a max of 520 watts of charging, given what I’ve seen of real world solar panel output this doesn’t seem much of a limitation. In the Rockies there was partial shade from a tree overhead and one across the street.

We have been able to shower daily, run the microwave and the wife’s hairdryer. In the NP we would leave early and comeback at lunch time. Our batteries would already be charged by the time we returned at noon. Since we had power to spare I often ran our fridge off the system to save some propane. The dometic 6cf seems to use about 250 watts.

I had reservations using a modified sine wave inverter. I watched a great YouTube review of the Duracell 3000 inverter which seemed to show it’s a solid unit. In our use it’s been great. The microwaves tone is slightly changed but I don’t think most people would catch that. Microwave times seemed to be increased by 20%. The fridge, hairdryer, laptop, phones and TV have worked fine. I think with four batteries and a soft start the system could run AC for a limited time.

Pulling 1300-1400 watts the voltage sagged from 13.2 to 12.9. The resting state of the batteries was 13.2, which surprised me I was expecting 12.8. Max observed charging power was 13.7V and 33.4 amps. I’m still learning about the mt50 and controller so there maybe more output than that. It did charge up to 14.6-14.7 volts but I saw less amps at those times.

The install:

The install took me 6 months to decide on. Running the roof wires was intimidating, I’ve never put a hole in an RV roof. The roof wires are run down through the bed/bath wall. I partially removed the medicine cabinet and used a box cutter to remove a panel that would then be concealed once the medicine cabinet was reinstalled. This worked really well and you can’t tell now that’s it’s reassembled. In that opening I used a 16” by 1/2 drill bit. There’s a single stud running roof to floor between the exterior wall and the door opening, the medicine cabinet screws into it. You can drop the wire on either side of that stud, I chose the cavity closer to the door opening because there are holes in the wall for the light switches and the thermostat AND at the base of the wall the factory already put a hole there for the wiring and grey vent. I drilled the pilot at a steep angle towards the door and then a 1” bit down from the roof angling into that inside cavity. Really, I’m unsure of the outer wall cavity is a straight shot down since I didn’t try. Those openings in the wall made it easier to fish the 6ga down. The wires then follow factory wires down into the belly and exit at the front crossmember and enter the pass through via 1/2” holes drilled in the floor.

The factory 12v wiring stinks. I removed everything forward of the battery switch. I replaced their 8ga with 6ga and removed that stupid 30amp thermal breaker (55amp wfco charger?). The tow cable, jack, camper converter 12V and Batt now meet at the battery switch instead of being exposed out on the tongue. I kept the camper converter 12V wire 8ga since there isn’t much of a draw on it other than the slide and furnace. The run from it to the batteries is much shorter now and partially 6ga wiring instead of 8ga. The slide operates faster. I have disconnected the WFCO charger for now since I don’t really need it and I don’t want my inverter trying to feed the batteries.

Sorry this post went so long, just trying to help my fellow campers out. I think there’s a lot of folks out there wanting to try solar, there’s just a lot of choices to shift though and the nervousness of getting it wrong. FYI Some of this pics are in progress and don’t show full wiring.