Darn Trons.

shammer1

New Member
Joined
Mar 2, 2024
Messages
5
Location
Bartow, FL
I just bought a GD Imagine 2800BH for me and the dog to go to Alaska, from central FL, and back. There will be tons of stupid questions. The proposed setup will be listed below.

Victron 24v 2x120 inverter, (Cut orange wire and install, blue tape and black taped orange wire, which leads to shore plug and breaker panel, pic),
Victron 150/70 MPPT charge controller (where are the docking port wires?) Pined out for aux stuff
Cerbo GX with 7in display
500amp Victron smart shunt
3x Mission Solar 340w solar panels (Made in Texas America)
4x Time USB 100Ah Pro LiFePo batteries. (Don't laugh, they have been running my test build for 6 months now, and been abused more than once, no issues)

1. First question, my paperwork says there is a solar docking port on the roof with 10Ga wires. Where are the wires supposed to be at or terminated. They are not in the service box in the passthrough.
2. Which end of the "Inverter" wire (Black or Blue) goes to the 50A plug and which is the breaker box, which looks to already be wired up for this configuration. 20240302_114412.jpg20240302_114412.jpg
 
Welcome. Your proposed system is very similar to what I just installed. I have a Hughes Power Watchdog (50A) feeding into a Victron MultiPlus II 24V and 120VAC into the trailer's breaker panel. On the low voltage side I have two 200AH 24V Redodo LiFePO4 batteries in parallel into a Lynx distributor. That goes to an Orion 24V-12V converter, which feeds the low voltage side. I also have three 365 W solar panels on the roof feeding a Victron 150/70 controller, which feeds the low voltage side of the MultiPlus II.

Today I tried to reset the Furion shunt for the new system, so I spent the entire day running as much stuff as I could. After eight hours I was down to about 10% on the batteries, so I tried following the reset instructions. Didn't work, but I learned that we probably can live very nicely without shore power.

Our trailer had a combiner box already on the roof because we had a small solar panel already there. The guy that installed the panels was going to replace it with a different box because I would have three panels instead of only one. Unfortunately, GD put a huge hole in the roof for the original box, so we had to put the new box up with the panels feeding it, then a short wire from that box to the original. The 10 ga wire is fine, at least for my installation. My three panels are in series, so max 120V and 10A.

My trailer had an inverter installed and wired differently that what was expected. Mine is hidden above the hot water heater and powers only the refrigerator (residential unit). I just disconnected one of the 12V wires, and left it turned off. The refrigerator works fine either on shore power or on batteries. I have that orange wire, which runs from the 120V breaker panel to the pass-through area and back to the breaker panel. I probably could take it out, but that's a lot of work for not a huge weight savings.

We're putting the trailer on a BIG diet, as all of the new stuff added quite a bit of weight. The panels are about 50 pounds each, the batteries are 80 each, the MultiPlus II is about 75 pounds, and so it goes. Probably 4-500 pound net increase in weight.

BTW, I abandoned the shore power cord connection and went with a hard-wired connection to the Power Watchdog. The wires are still connected to the outside connector, and I need to disconnect them from that. If I can pull the wire out easily I'll do that. Otherwise it will just be in there, loose, and not connected to anything.

I have all of the new stuff mounted in the pass-through area under the front closet, so I had to run a wire between the breaker box and the MultiPlus II. Lots of fun! That's when I decided to abandon the existing shore power connection, as I would have had to run another wire to the MultiPlus II for that. I used the original shore power cord to go directly into the Power Watchdog, just cut the trailer end off. When I did that I noticed some indication that one of the line terminals was overheating. NOT good. I'll watch that one carefully.
 
Thanks fore the help here. 365w panel sound like Mission Solar panels like I have. 3x 340w and 3x 365w (365's were selling out got the last 3 here). The install for me is going to be absolute minimal impact on the stock trailer build. My hope is wire up the charger and inverter and go. I can not find the "Solar" wires coming from the roof, are they in the pass thru compartment and what colors are they? Have not got on the roof and looked at the box yet, that's today hopefully.
 
The wires on my trailer are red and black. They come into the front pass-through.
 
The wires on my trailer are red and black. They come into the front pass-through.

Red and Black sound like what should be inside the orange jacket, (L1 and L2, along with white and a ground). Grand design has been very helpful to a point. My rig does not have the docking port or extra wires. So that will all be a self install, starting on it today. Pics coming.
 
Red is normally the positive and black the negative in DC wiring, which is what comes from the solar panel. They are also the L1 and L2 colors in the 50A cord. Best to keep straight what you are working on, lest you let out the magic smoke.
 

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