what's going on everybody welcome to Lake Havasu City Arizona beautiful water
out here you got the London Bridge on the other side can't see it right now
I'm gonna talk with you and share with you my awesome solar system here on
Miranda the Murata so I'm gonna talk about the specs and then I'm gonna talk
about some of the reasons behind this to help somebody else kind of plan what
they're doing but just understand I am NOT an electrician so I will make
mistakes in this video I will put a link below for RV prepper Wayne on YouTube he
is the installer who installed this entire system as well as a link down
below for where I got everything for this entire system at Arizona northern
Arizona wind and Sun and James he got every piece of this every wire every
bracket I have for wreck and wreck and plug I don't know but there are 320 watt
solar panels they are 66 inches long by 39 inches across so the same as the ones
I had on Yoda that were two 15s these are three hundred and twenty watts
apiece totaling twelve hundred and eighty watts of solar on the roof and I
originally was only going to get three of these and then when I realized that
four could fit now I never will never tilt these panels ever they are sealed
permanently to the roof because when I tilted the old panels I would get 25%
better efficiency in the winter well you do the math adding a fourth panel to
three I just gained 25 percent by doing absolutely nothing except buying another
192 dollar panel and yes these are dirt cheap at Arizona wind and Sun I think
they're still on sale for a hundred and ninety two dollars for any number you
want no nope no limit for 320 watt solar panels so Wayne's got them tacked down
to it fit here to up front so we got Z brackets down here and Wayne used VHB
tape on the bottom as well as the screws sealed those all up the mc4 connectors
are running down here these are 24 volt they are all run in parallel he's got
all the wiring zip tied and looking nice on the roof and sealed and then we went
in through the refrigerator vent which you'll see on my other video I will link
it up top for you you can see how we took the fridge out and wired that so we
tend to drill any holes learning more holes into the roof and then the other
two up there with enough clearance for my antenna on the front and my batwing
TV antenna on this side tried to use up as much of the roof space as I possibly
could up here you don't want to mix and match panels like get a little one to
fit right there or something you want to stay within about 10-15 percent of the
same exact wattage coming off each panel if they're going to the same charge
controller so that's my roof I got to come up here about once a week and just
kind of clean off the panels take the dust off these are monocrystalline
panels they were pulling 90 volts 90 volts of DC power going down into the
charge controller which I will show you next let's come inside here first so hey
Jax how you doing buddy that's some drinking water here this is where the
stock cycle batteries were at in that compartment right there we removed them
and started from scratch reason for that is the 220 for group batteries that were
in here we're not the same size they were not a direct replacement with the
battleborn lithium batteries that I got so instead of putting one here and
putting two others somewhere else we just decided to move the entire system
and Wayne decided to make that look really clean so I'll show you what that
looks like everything is rerouted to this cubby
hole right here valuable stuff in there so we did add an alarm in here I got
three battleborn 100 amp lithium batteries all done up looking nicely in
here got the blocks in there let's see on the inside here we have a DC cutoff
switch here we've got our junction box here with a hundred amp going from the
charge controller to the batteries and there's also a 30 amp coming from the
roof into the charge controller let's see yes everything looks nice and here's
our shunt and battery meter cord which is this is all USB
which I will show you later but a hundred and fifty amp MPPT charge
controller there and then this big magical beauty here the victor on energy
charger inverter 3000 watt this bad boy here is a 50 amp pass through so in
essence what we've done is every RV has your fuse box and you know your your
junk where all your power is and not and everything well these batteries have now
been rerouted to that converter box inside so there's a big huge gauge wire
going into that and then coming back here so that every outlet and everything
in the microwave the air conditioner on the roof everything is running off of
this bad boy this whole section here unless I need more then I can plug into
Shore power or fire up the generator I have not needed more in the last two
days of using this system though it has done everything I have wanted it to so I
like how clean and everything this looks in here what this system does so far I
mean and it's still a April here so it's not fully Sun like in the summer time
but we're maintaining a hundred percent on the batteries and even when I put a
big draw on it and I mean a big draw like i percolate coffee in the morning
on running all of the TVs and stuff I can run my air conditioner off of this
system off just three lithium batteries and there's 3000 watt inverter and
barely make a dent into the batteries why because I'm bringing in 90 amps of
solar to the batteries while turning on my roof air conditioner I'm only running
44 amps off of it so you're still have a bunch of amps delivering to the
batteries which means they're not even being depleted and I hate to use that
term hey I'm running my air conditioner off solar because you're not you're
converting the DC battery but the solar is coming in at such a high rate that
you're not using any of the battery power it's staying at 100% so that's
what I like and some people might ask why only 300 amp hours of lithium when
you have twelve hundred and eighty Watts up there you know a lot of people go 700
Watts up here and 700 amp hour storage in an AGM well the lithium is huge
yes and it's expensive it is it is a hefty price up front but with a 10 year
warranty on those and that 300 amp hours is true 300 because you can drain those
to zero we're a deep cycle AGM or even a led asset you could only go to about 60
maybe 50 percent discharge before you have ruined the battery and it won't
cycle anymore so I have a true 300 amp hours of storage there in power whereas
Yoda with the 4 with the 5 batteries that I had with the 500 amp hours I
really only had 250 that I could use so if you do the math and the other thing
that nobody and I mean nobody ever considers with their installs or talks
about later is your rate of recharge which is so important okay you may think
you're awesome because you have all of these amp hours of storage but in real
life what do you do during that one week where there's no solar it you are
running your generator eight to ten hours a day using your charger
desperately trying to fill that huge battery bank that you can't do because
you don't have any solar so you want to have the right amount of amp hours like
a normal amount that you actually use and not go crazy overboard with it
because it is not always perfect and sunny and nice all the time where it's
just automatic and it charges that there are going to be times when you have to
run your generator and you have to add extra Chargers in order to recharge that
battery bank on those less than ideal sunny days and it's a nightmare when you
have too much and it takes too long so I know personally that we will be okay
with just 300 amp hours I am almost absolutely positive but that is a good
number for us and everybody building a system needs to come up with that number
and not go crazy with your amp hour storage so let's hop inside and run some
air conditioning off my batteries oh you're helping with what are you gonna
show me where the food is okay okay we do have the slides out right now so it
gives us a little more room every outlet and so like the TV over
here and the microwave is always going to be on the coffeepot like I said works
great here's where the magic happens I'm going to turn on the fan which is ducted
through the vents here and it's on running the wall and the batteries if we
take a look at our Vic Tron display here where it's still at thirteen point four
seven volts we can see if we we are drawing seven amps off of just the fans
a very inefficient but it's not doing anything to the batteries 90 watts C is
good it still says we're ninety nine point seven percent full but what's
great about the system is that everything is bluetooth the charge
controller this device right here and the battery monitor that's going to the
shunt will tell us exactly what's going on that system through our smart phone
yes how convenient so we can open up the victor own energy app here and it's
showing all three devices this little round one right here is the same thing
that's on the wall once that connects here it's saying that we are still 100%
state of charge the voltage thirteen point four four it'll have negative
numbers here at the amps so we're using two point seven amps we're using thirty
six thirty five Watts right now of the panel and in the time remaining right
here is currently saying two days and ten hours under these conditions
that's not unlimited like I said before sometimes this will say infinite because
it's constantly getting so much Sun it's only about 10:00 a.m. right now so the
Sun is at a kind of a weird angle but let's fire up the air conditioner now
cool to 68 degrees gave it about thirty seconds and the compressor turned on and
we are getting ice cold air coming out of these vents air conditioning without
running any generator or anything straight off of my batteries so how are
we doing voltage here thirteen point two two volts scroll through drawn now fifty
five amps off the batteries six hundred and eighty watts it says our batteries
are at 99.5% let's open the app again going to the smart charge controller now
gives us a little more information we're still in the positive of amps okay so
what we're bringing from the roof and what we're using right now we are still
bringing in a positive twelve point eight
we are still in float mode so we're not even in both mood where it gives us all
of the amps that we want on the batteries because it doesn't need it 800
watts is all it needs right now to maintain a hundred percent battery
nothing is truly unlimited with any system but certainly lithium batteries
can take a beating as compared to deep-cycle AGM and this system was
custom-built by northern Arizona wind and Sun for my specific our specific
needs in this RV to boondock and to be able to use all of those amp hours and
to run an air conditioner if we need to but also just running that fan you know
as I showed six amps or something like that just to run the ducted air in here
means that we don't have to put box fans in all of the windows and have cords
running everywhere it's just gonna be push-button just like we were parked at
an RV park with hookups or running the generator so that's my system if you're
looking for somebody to install it i highly recommend RV prepper lane
although i don't know how long you'll be in arizona he may be leaving that area
as it gets warm and I also highly gotta recommend northern Arizona wind and Sun
for your kit I mean they get everything they get all of your crimping wires they
they match all the gauges so I have no curiosity I don't have to worry at all
that something wasn't done right because it was matched and paired specifically
for our needs in Miranda here so as the months carry on and we get later into
the summer it'll be interesting to see how we use this system when we're
getting a lot more Sun up on those solar panels but right now I am saying goodbye
to the generator it's a good feeling alright we're back on the road soon hi
guys