My Solar

This post is for reader Bill in Nebraska. He asked about our solar and since today was the day to open up the battery compartment and water the batteries, I thought it would be a good time to snap some photos.

The rooftop panel is a single 125 watt unit. This is about the minimum unless you just want to keep your battery(s) topped off without much being drawn out. We can boondock with this panel as long as we watch our power consumption. We can watch both TV’s and power the Starchoice for several hours at night and as long as there is at least a bright sky the next day, the batteries will recover. More importantly, we can leave the motorhome parked for several days without hookups and the solar will power the controls for the fridge and keep it running on propane as well as keeping the batteries charged.

The rooftop panel is wired down the fridge vent with #10 wire to the Solar Charge Controller and then to the two 6 volt golf cart batteries under the stairs. If I ever add a second panel, I will upgrade to #6 wire. I then ran #6 wire to a 400 watt inverter mounted near the TV area. This inverter runs the TV, TV speaker system, Starchoice, both laptops and the cell phone and camera battery chargers with power to spare. We have another 200 watt inverter in the bedroom for that TV and Starchoice receiver.