Have you ever wanted to be able to camp anywhere in your RV without electrical
hookups or running a generator? Welcome to part two of our solar install series where I'm going
to show all the solar panels, the wiring, the solar controllers, and how it all ties together.
If you missed part one and you're interested in our lithium batteries and inverters,
check that out in the description below. And like I said, in part one, I'm not a professional. This
isn't intended as a how-to. I'm just showing you what I did. I wanted to design a system that could
run our air conditioners. So I knew I was going to have to use our roof space as efficiently
as possible. So after measuring and sketching everything out around the air conditioners and the
vents and antennas and everything else that was up here, we decided we could fit 15 panels up here
and still minimize shading and have enough room to walk around. We went with 175 watt flexible solar
panels from Renogy because they're significantly lighter than traditional panels and with a solar
install of this size we were concerned about the weight capacity of our trailer.
When the solar panels arrived in boxes, I thought it would be best to give them all a quick check
since I knew I wouldn't be installing them right away. I laid them all out in the sun, looked
them over, and quickly checked them all with a multimeter just to make sure they were showing
their rated voltages. Everything checked out, and they were all put away again until needed.
So this is the solar connector that originally came with our trailer. And, I think I found the
wires for it underneath, and they're a little too small for the big project that I'm going
to be doing here. So, kind of my first order of business on the roof here is to actually
dig out all the caulking and remove this and see what I have underneath.
Well, apparently that is it. Just have to clean this up and figure out where it all goes next.
It turns out I can't actually get the two gauge wire to fit through where I wanted it to.
This hole here underneath the old solar MC4 connectors is plenty big, but the, where the
wire actually drops, is it comes immediately this way and goes down by this vent over here
all the way down to the compartment below. And where this black tank vent enters that compartment
is right up against some framing, and I wasn't able to get the wire to fit through there.
And even if I could, there's probably no way I would get six of those big wires to go through it.
So today I guess was just more of an exploratory day in the roof. Unfortunately, I get to spend the
rest of the evening just patching these holes up. It's time to start pulling cable again. I'll show
you what I had tried and what I'm going to try now. If we come through here to the bathroom,
there is a section in the wall here where that black tank vent goes through. It's
actually this side of the cabinet because you can see this extra space right here
goes all the way down to that compartment and apparently I couldn't get the cable to go through
there. So we're going to try something different. Up here in through the loft,
over in that wall right there, I can take a panel out and get all the way up to the
to the roof and run the cable down. That loft section is right behind this wall right here,
so this curved section is where the wire will come down, hopefully anyway. I can
get in here to the control panel and pull this back. It'll drop down from up here
and I can work it back here, through, I might have to widen one of the holes in the wall there.
And from all of that good stuff I can get in
this side. I can access where it's coming through back here all the way down to
the floor. I just need to get this panel out right here now. And out it goes.
And that gives a big hole here. It comes through this wall and goes out into this
compartment back there where the inverters and the solar controllers are all mounted.
Well, got my first little hole. Time for a bigger hole.
Because nothing's more fun than drilling holes in a perfectly good roof. That's a pretty good
sized hole. I think I'll leave it at that for a bit until I can clean up and get some of this
wire through. Well, here we are up in the loft. So hopefully I can stick myself back in here and
feel out where these cables are coming through. Here we go. I might have to cut a bigger hole.
I cut a little bigger hole in the ceiling down in the loft down there. I'm having a
hard time locating this cable. So, I'm actually gonna dig up, uh this one that I did before
for the uh the Winegard box and see if I can get into that hole that that cable goes into
to locate this and feed it through to here. Because ultimately this has to come this way
to go down this vent and into there. Kind of feels like I'm just chopping my roof to bits. And I am.
My dad's gonna try to feed me the wire. All right can you feed it? I'll give it
a try. Oh cool it's going. Oh sweet success. There it is. Might as well just pull a bunch
in right here before I drop it down. All right I think we're good for now. Well it is another
day. Without further ado it's time for the next round of wire. I can already tell this
is going to be harder than the first one. Are you ready? All right go ahead and pull. I'll feed it.
That's probably enough. I'll come down and do the next part.
Now we're in business.
Now that we finally have all six cables running through the roof,
all the way to the cargo bay where the solar controllers are mounted,
it's time to wire them into a waterproof junction box where all the wires from the
solar panels will converge and thus be connected to the solar controllers down below. First,
I am crimping the lugs onto the ends of each of the six two gauge cables with a hammer crimper.
I used a piece of wood to hammer the crimps on to try to keep from gouging the roof while hammering.
Then, I used a little piece of shrink wrap over each cable where it meets the lug
to insulate any exposed wire using a heat gun to shrink it down.
I installed three wire glands by drilling through the side of a waterproof junction box for the
solar panel wires. Next, I cut a hole in the bottom of it for the roof cables to come in.
Here, I used Dicor sealant to create a waterproof seal before screwing the box into the roof.
Right after that, I screwed in a couple sets of terminal blocks and connected the six big
cables to them. The junction box is now ready to accept solar panel wires. I mounted one, two,
and three solar controllers much the same way as the inverters. The big two gauge wires from
the roof come into this compartment from way back here and then onto each corresponding controller.
Then, the controllers are connected to the battery bank. They all talk to each other
and the control panel in the hallway over these Cat 5 data cables. Configuration was
done over Bluetooth with a Victron app on my phone, and the control panel in the hallway
updated itself as soon as the data cable was plugged in. And now, onto the solar panels.
Most of the panels are up already,
but I got these two spots left. And I'm about to put one right next to that AC unit.
I thought I would show you uh putting one down. I've never mounted solar
panels before so I watched a lot of YouTube videos, of course. And uh since I'm using
flexible panels I can tape them down using roof repair tape. So that's what I've been
doing. I'll get them in place, and I'll put Velcro strips down just to hold them there,
and then I'll use the uh roof repair tape to actually hold them in place. Here we go.
All right. Now sticking this down just the right way is kind of tricky
at first. I think that ought to do it. So I try to
spot clean all the areas on the roof where I'm putting the uh, well anything with adhesive down.
I had cleaned the entire roof before beginning any modifications up there. Then I only needed to do
a little spot cleaning before taping a panel down. I gotta measure these out and cut them.
The far edge is always the most awkward one because I don't really want to lay on my panel.
One side down. Three to go.
It's a bit of a trick getting it on the panel well, while also not covering up your your cells.
I just kind of slowly pull the adhesive back and try to get it in a nice even line making sure not
to cover any of the actual solar cell. Kind of work the air bubbles out with my fingers as I go.
Which I've done a pretty good job in some places and then maybe not so well in others but oh well.
The last part here to get around the connectors,
I'll just have to cut out a couple of notches in the tape.
And
there we go. Now I really only have one more to do and I can get on with wiring the rest of them.
Our panels all came with these MC4 connectors built in.
I bought my own MC4 crimpers and connectors off of Amazon and built
custom length cables to attach the panels to each other and back to the junction box.
I wired our panels together in series in sets of three. On one side of the trailer,
two sets of three are wired in parallel to the first controller. On the other side, two more
sets of three are wired in parallel to the second controller. And that leaves just three more panels
in series wired to the third controller. That leaves us with a little bit of room for expansion
if we ever think we need it. We're really happy with the way the system turned out. Now we can
run our air conditioners on any given day. We still try not to run two major appliances on a
single inverter just so we don't max them out. The other limitation worth mentioning is that if we
want to run air conditioners for several hours on a really cloudy day, we still support it a little
bit with our small portable generator. See our related blog post for an example of a day where I
tracked our solar usage as well as general costs and time involved on this part of the project.
And that concludes our solar install. Thanks for watching. If you have any questions leave
a comment below and we hope you subscribe and continue to follow along on our travels.