Hey friends, welcome back to Grand Adventure! I'm your host Marc Guido, and finally our solar panels
and our lithium iron phosphate batteries have arrived! So today on this episode we're going
to get those solar panels installed and get the batteries installed, too, so stay tuned.
So I've got The RV Addict here today helping us out, get these things installed on the roof. I'd
like to introduce you to Kevin Bowen! Kevin, tell us a little bit about The RV Addict!
Well Marc, it's great to meet you, be up here and give you a hand before the weather turns bad.
Indeed!
So I started my channel last summer. It's something fun to do,
and I used to make videos ten years ago and found YouTube is even more fun now.
It is. It is.
I've been learning the whole process. I love to do stuff on my RV, kind of
like you do. Put junk in there, make changes and then go travel.
Well, you've got more skills than I do so that's why I've got you here
helping me today -- make sure I don't do something stupid with a drill in the roof.
So well, thanks for having me up here. This is going to be fun. We should get that done.
Perfect! We'll put a link right here on the screen so you can go check out Kevin's channel
and go subscribe to The RV Addict. Let's get to work.
This RV upgrade project upon which we're embarking is going to come in two phases.
The first with Kevin's help is to install two new 200-watt Renogy solar panels on our roof.
Our Durango came from the KZ factory with one 190-watt Go Power panel already installed as part
of KZ's optional "Off the Grid" package, along with the necessary wiring, rooftop solar prep
and solar charge controller. That's going to make this system fairly easy to upgrade with additional
panels. We're going to add them in parallel with the existing panel with waterproof MC4 solar
connectors, using a three-to-one branch connector to the existing wiring. We're by no means experts
on this sort of project, but we spent the time to extensively research our options and
learn as much as we could, and we're reasonably confident that we're taking the best route for us.
These 200-watt 12-volt Renogy panels are surprisingly compact given their output,
and measure approximately 64 inches long by 26 inches wide. This means fewer mounts
and fewer holes in our roof than we'd have if we used a more common 100-watt panel.
They have an optimum operating current of 9.52 amps and a short circuit current of 10.9 amps.
They weigh just over 25 pounds each. Bypass diodes between the cells minimize the power drop caused
by partial shading. They're warrantied to provide 95 percent of their rated output after five years,
90 after 10 years, and 80 percent after 25 years. We're installing these two new panels
on Renogy's RV Tilt Mount Brackets. The existing Go Power panel in the middle is on a flat mount
and we're going to leave that panel that way for now, but the two new panels totaling 400
watts will be able to be tilted towards the sun at that time of year when the sun is low in the sky,
resulting in an increase in solar power production of up to 30 percent over a
flat mount. The frame on these Renogy panels is already pre-drilled to accommodate these mounts.
Thanks to Kevin for the additional video footage used in filming this episode.
We encourage our viewers to check out Kevin's YouTube channel,
The RV Addict, which includes a substantial catalog of both how-to and travel videos.
Yeah I know, the jeans with Crocs and no socks isn't a good look.
But hey, I'm comfortable. Don't judge me.
We're going to use well nuts to affix these new panels to the roof. Well nuts include a hex nut
in a rubber sleeve that inserts into the hole. When the screw is tightened down the nut pulls
back on the rubber sleeve, providing a solid connection and increasing the waterproofness
of the hole in the roof, which we'll of course also cover with Dicor self-leveling lap sealant.
Still, it's always unnerving to take a drill to your roof and start making holes.
As they say, measure twice and drill once. Take a deep breath and pull that drill's trigger!
This is a man that's not afraid to drill in his own rig.
Tilting the panels is a simple process accomplished entirely without tools by using these
knobs and wing nuts. All of the necessary parts remain right on the roof, too. All of the products
we're using for this project are available on Amazon, and we purchased everything you see today
ourselves. Nothing in this video is sponsored. We'll put affiliate links in the video description
down below if you'd like to check out any of these items for yourself. It costs you no more to shop
Amazon via our links, but Grand Adventure receives a small commission from Amazon on each purchase to
help support the channel and keep bringing you fresh new RV travel and how-to videos each week.
And that's it! Now it's just tilted toward the sun for the optimal solar angle.
With the solar phase of our project now complete, we now have 590 watts of solar on the roof ready
to recharge our three new lithium iron phosphate batteries that we'll install next, so stay tuned.
So now that we have those solar panels installed and working great (thank you again
Kevin for your help) I'm going to set about trying to get those batteries installed. For phase two of
this project, our battery upgrade, we opted for three 100 amp-hour lithium iron phosphate
batteries from Battle Born. These are drop-in replacements for the common group 24 or group
27 size batteries, but they're going to require an upgrade to our Durango's charge controller, too.
So now the WFCO converter that we have installed by the factory in our Durango
does not handle lithium, at least at the charging voltages that these lithium batteries require,
so we're going to install this Progressive Dynamics
converter to replace our existing WFCO converter. This one is lithium ready; however,
the charge controller is actually underneath the fifth wheel stairs, the ones that lead up into our
bedroom, and they're actually behind that wall. So we're going to have to get this TV out of there
and get that wall removed in order to get to where the converter is.
It's a good thing I'm small!
Now that we've removed that wall we have access to the RV's converter.
As you can see it's just screwed into the floor of the basement behind where that wall was located.
Changing our converter is only a simple matter of removing the screws holding it to the floor,
unplugging it from the wall outlet, and removing the ground and battery cables
from the old converter, then reversing the process with the new converter.
Okay, the new converter is installed. Now we just have to move to swap out the batteries.
Now that we have the new converter installed our next step will be to remove the two cheap flooded
wet-cell Interstate batteries installed by our dealer. There are numerous advantages that lithium
iron phosphate batteries have over their wet-cell cousins. For starters, these lithium batteries
each weigh 25 percent less than the batteries they're replacing. They also charge more quickly.
You can only draw a wet-cell battery down to 50% charge before the plates inside the battery
start sulfating and causing permanent damage to the battery, whereas you can draw lithium
iron phosphate batteries virtually down to zero. That means that we're only getting 64 amp-hours
out of our two wet cell batteries, whereas we'll have 300 usable amp-hours from our three lithium
iron phosphate batteries. Additionally, their performance doesn't degrade as the voltage drops,
as is the case with wet cell batteries. Wet cell batteries also give off toxic gases, which is why
our battery boxes have these ventilation tubes, whereas lithium iron phosphate batteries don't
give off these gases so that ventilation won't be needed. Plus they're maintenance-free and can be
mounted in any position. Lithium iron phosphate batteries are dramatically more expensive than
flooded wet cell or absorbent glass mat (or AGM) batteries, but they last substantially longer.
These batteries currently cost $900 each. Battle Born says that these units are good for 3000
to 5000 charge cycles, and they warranty their batteries for 10 years,
whereas the life expectancy of a wet cell battery is around three or four years over 200
to 700 charge cycles. When you calculate the usable amp-hours and their longevity, lithium iron
phosphate batteries are actually cheaper in the long run despite their much higher upfront cost.
We're installing three batteries for now, wired in parallel to combine their amp-hours but leave
their output at 12 volts, but Battle Born says that we can drop additional batteries into our
battery bank within two years if we want to do so, with no negative impact upon performance.
So with this project now complete we now have 590 watts of solar on the roof,
and we have 300 amp-hours of lithium battery in our battery bank, turning our new Durango into a
boondocking machine! That's going to let us stay out there as long as our waste tanks will allow.
These upgrades, though, they came at a substantial price. I think all told in round numbers, we're
into this for approximately $3,500. Now we do have one more enhancement to our energy system that we
are going to install in an upcoming episode and that'll be a Bluetooth battery monitor.
Also coming up later in April we're going to get back out on the road for an entire
spring, summer and fall of travel episodes, and we would much rather (if we're going to
be honest with you), we'd much rather be making cinematic travel episodes of Grand Adventure
than these how-to episodes, and we think you Grand Adventurers enjoy those a little bit more as well.
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