Solar. Been waiting on this for a long time. First, I recently took an overnight trip to visit family and it dropped down in the 20's. I was not in the van that night and left it unplugged. Had I been home it would've been plugged in as usual. Anyway, with nothing using power that night (I doubt if my fridge cycled on more than once or twice with it that cold out) my batteries dropped to about 10.5
So, they're more or less toast. I found a great deal on some Deka group 31 AGMs and very happy to say I have fresh batteries for the first time with this van! I'm anxious to see how well they do. About this same time I started mounting my solar panel. I went with this starter kit:
http://www.amazon.com/Renogy-100W-Mono- ... y+100+watt
It was silver so I masked it off and painted it black before mounting. I was able to drill all holes outside of the roof canvas. I drilled 4 for the front brackets, 2 for wires and was able to tack the rear brackets on to the existing penthouse front bolts, the ones for the front latches were spaced almost perfectly for this panel. When I redid my interior I prewired for solar with the wiring hidden behind the wall panels. No pic of much of the wiring but it's pretty standard, and hidden. I zip tied the wires from the panel to the overhead light wiring in the front left corner of the PH, and hid the rest, including fuse, under the upholstery by the left spring. Here's the layout under the front of the PH, sorry for the lousy pic.
Layout on top
And here's the PWM controller that came with the kit. I didn't mount it visibly for two reasons. First, there's no digital display and second I didn't want to mess up any cabinets since I hope to add a good MPPT someday, which I hope I can mount to up higher on a cabinet wall with my thermostat, etc. I am in the process of adding a digital ammeter and can't really figure out where yet without adding lots of wire.
For now
Can't wait to field test this setup!
Many thanks to Scalf77 for his wiki on solar power. It's very informative and gives a super easy wiring layout for anyone not sure they can do this themselves.
mediawiki/index.php?title=Solar_Power
Yes, this setup will be awesome for maintaining my sanity on bad weather trips, or at the beach, etc. Also, had a flat on my Jeep the other day (slow leaking tire I already had fixed once). It was awesome to just drive the van over where the Jeep was (further than my shop air hose would reach) and air it back up without dragging anything out. It's paying for itself already!
Linear Mode
