Community Forums

babock · 12-05-2018, 01:17 PM

That will work.

In my case, I rarely even use my converter. I have 700W of solar and lithium batteries and I dry camp mainly. It's only there for if I am in bad weather or complete shade for a length of time. I can go 5 days easy on my batteries if I conserve.

RoadDogYVR · 12-05-2018, 01:39 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by babock

That will work.

In my case, I rarely even use my converter. I have 700W of solar and lithium batteries and I dry camp mainly.

Canadian WET Coast of British Columbia here. With 160w of solar on the roof, the charge controller is saying I'm only putting in about 1.5 to 2 Ah per day (I'm seeing .1 to .2 amps going in), based on the sun being so low in the sky at our latitude (pretty much right at the 49th parallel) this time of year plus the minimal sun hours.

Middle of summer when we get sunlight similar to what you are getting right now, the 160w tops us off in less than 5 hours on sunny days.

RoadDogYVR · 12-05-2018, 01:49 PM

To put it in perspective, here is where we camped mid October for Canadian Thanksgiving. We were getting maybe 1 Ah per day due to low sun levels PLUS being in a heavily shaded oldgrowth forest campsite with a Northern exposure on the panel. I pulled out my portable panel and plugged it in but didn't get a whole heck of a lot of sun, even though I "chased" the sun through the day keeping the panel out of the shade as much as I could...

astrocamper · 12-05-2018, 02:37 PM

I disconnected the factory installed converter when I did my system. I have a 2200 watt inverter with transfer switch. I put in a new master breaker panel that connects to the trailer 30 amp plug. It feeds the transfer switch on a 30 amp circuit and a 20 amp circuit goes to my 60 and 45 amp chargers. The output of the inverter transfer switch goes to the original trailer whole house breaker panel. I set it up so I can get a 105 amps of DC charging from my Honda EU2200 when needed. When solar is working well I only use it. I have short 2 AWG cables between my charger and my large battery bus bars. The links between the bus bars and my four 100 amp LiFePO4 batters is 4/0 AWG. The large cable links allow my chargers to deliver the full rated output.

RoadDogYVR · 12-05-2018, 02:58 PM

Jeff, that's pretty impressive and where I MAY end up going "long" term. Just trying to keep this upgrade to about $1000 for now until we decide for certain that the current trailer is the one we want to hold on to. We had a rough start to ownership and keep waiting for "the other shoe to drop".

astrocamper · 12-05-2018, 09:03 PM

The 20RD was one of the trailers I was considering. I wanted an Outdoor RV or Arctic Fox without slide. I plan on retiring in 5-6 years and the Arctic Fox 22G is the trailer we plan to keep into retirement. We bought the truck and trailer last year to get them paid off before retiring. I spent about 6 weekends after buying the trailer making all the power upgrades.

My previous trailer was a 5x8 cargo conversion. I only had 240 watts of solar with a 1000 watt inverter and a pair of Trojan T105 batteries. We only used solar to charge those batteries and they were going strong after 10 years of use.

RoadDogYVR · 12-06-2018, 09:33 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by astrocamper

My previous trailer was a 5x8 cargo conversion.

I looked very hard at doing this with a 7x16. May yet in the future now that I have a much better idea of how RV electrical and appliances all come together.

AaronColo · 12-12-2018, 10:52 PM

I had a similar situation as you with a RV converter that output to low of voltage through 25 feet of 8awg wire. I wanted to add solar so my solution was to buy a 50 amp Victron MPPT charge controller. I also bought a 15 amp 48 volt DC power supply. I put the 48 volt power supply where my old converter was and the Victron charge controller close to the batteries. I have a switch to select either solar panels or the 48vdc power supply as the source for the charge controller. The charge controller charges the batteries at 14.8v and about 45 amps. The Victron charge controller is Bluetooth enabled so I can see charge status and I could customize the charge profile per the battery manufacturers recommendations. Since I am only running 15 amps through the old converter 8 awg wire voltage drop is no longer an issue. I did fuse everything properly and make sure nothing else was on the 8awg wire run that is now being used for 48v. I also bought the Victron Battery sense. This sticks to the side of one of your batteries and connects directly to the battery banks positive and negative terminals. It wirelessly transmits the exact battery voltage and temperature to the charge controller so the voltage can be compensated for voltage drop and temp.

RoadDogYVR · 12-13-2018, 08:16 AM

AaronColo: Interesting solution... I may need to look into that. And I've been looking very seriously at adding a Victron solution for identifying charge and usage but want to do everything all at once... now, likely in the spring although I may add another bank of batteries to get me through the winter boondocking as I'll want more Ah anyway...

Thanks.

manowell · 12-13-2018, 02:03 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by astrocamper

I disconnected the factory installed converter when I did my system. I have a 2200 watt inverter with transfer switch. I put in a new master breaker panel that connects to the trailer 30 amp plug. It feeds the transfer switch on a 30 amp circuit and a 20 amp circuit goes to my 60 and 45 amp chargers. The output of the inverter transfer switch goes to the original trailer whole house breaker panel. I set it up so I can get a 105 amps of DC charging from my Honda EU2200 when needed. When solar is working well I only use it. I have short 2 AWG cables between my charger and my large battery bus bars. The links between the bus bars and my four 100 amp LiFePO4 batters is 4/0 AWG. The large cable links allow my chargers to deliver the full rated output.

I like what you have in it, but it may take me a few re-reads to fully digest it. It sounds like it accomplishes where I'm wanting to go. Which is to have good batteries, good inverter, good charger to prolong battery life, solar, and a generator that I never start unless I need the air conditioning.

greenhorn1 · 12-14-2018, 08:15 AM

We use this: Bought from Best Converter online. Great price and service. Not sure if it does everything the Kisae does, but it does charge at 14.8

RoadDogYVR · 12-14-2018, 09:29 AM

Thanks Greenhorn1. Still working out who the reliable manufacturers are in the RV and solar/deep cycle industry.

One thing I like about the Kisae is the multi-bank charging.

I'm looking at adding a single LiFePO4 (hope I got that all right...) battery like a Battle Born or Trojan Trillium into the mix with the sole purpose of running an AC inverter for small demand 120v power like TV, Blu-Ray et al in the coach. The Kisae will allow me to charge the Lithium and flooded batteries on their own specific profiles and will keep my systems segregated - I want the house batteries to remain on the A-Frame and power The Usual Suspects (12v lights, fridge, fans, furnace...) and have a dedicated battery to power a small inverter (400-1000 watts) for "comfort" electronics when boondocking. The Lithium battery can sit comfortably under the bed along with the inverter which would then power a dedicated plug and can be easily switched and removed for extended cold weather storage - we don't have the luxury of RV parking where we live and have it parked a couple of kilometers away at a storage yard so can't leave it plugged in and heated.

babock · 12-14-2018, 11:03 AM

I have 2 Battleborn as my house battery bank. To me it's way better than having and charging 2 banks of batteries. I have a 2000W inverter to supply my 120V AC loads.

My Batteries are also under my bed.

RoadDogYVR · 12-28-2018, 10:00 PM

So I've been doing a lot of research and soul searching and decided reinventing the wheel probably isn't the smartest thing for me to do...

Likely what will happen is I will have the converter in the WFCO disconnected, add a GoPower IC2000 Inverter Charger to the front pass thru and connected to the shore power side AC entering the trailer. The AC out side of the combination unit will then feed back into the WFCO for distribution of AC circuits. When plugged into shore power, I'll have full 30 amp available and when I'm off shore power, I'll have the opportunity to fire up the 2000w inverter side and have that power available at any and all AC outlets in the trailer, all switched by the GoPower's onboard transfer switch. Plus I'll add a battery disconnect to the IC2000/power centre side of things to allow me to shut down that side of things completely when not needed while adding a couple more solar panels to the roof. Solar won't be behind the disconnect so that side will always be available to charge the batteries, even when "put away".

In summer, I'll be able to maintain battery state of charge on solar primarily and top up via shore power as necessary and in winter I'll hook up the generator to shore and give the batteries a real jolt to keep them up and running.

Oh, and add 2 more 6v GC2 batteries to the bank shortly as the existing set have only been in service since July so adding two more right now before capacity falls off the original 2 doesn't impact the life of them too badly.