DIY Camper RV Solar Panel Installation

 

Do It Yourself Camper Motor Home Photovoltaic Panel Installment

So why would I want a solar panel mounted onto my fifth wheel permanently? Well, this is a 60 watt solar panel 60 watts at 12, volts equals 5 amps at maximum output, 5, 5 amps and say we had 10 at 10 hours of sunshine.

That’s, 50 amp hours of energy we can create. Now, since my solar panel is an aim directly at the Sun, I’m, certainly not going to get maximum output, so maybe I’ll, get just say: 60 % output that would be 3 amps at 10.

Hours of sunshine would be 30 amp hours now if we even had more Sun. You know there’s more energy, so I could have theoretically between say, 25 to 60 amp hours of energy, depending on how much sunshine is shining and so forth.

Here’s, my battery it’s, probably about a hundred amp hour battery, and I’ve, actually got to that’s, a hundred amp hour battery in there, but they aren’t. They throw at their peak, you know their old batteries.

So if we just assume that I have a hundred amp hours of energy, meaning, I could flow one amp for a hundred hours or a hundred amps for one hour or 50 amps for two hours, etc. So if all I was using those water – and maybe the lighting in the summer time – and I didn’t need to run the furnace, you could probably you’d – probably use maybe 20 amp hours of energy, and if we were producing 30 from our solar panel, you could in theory, stay out for weeks when you were using the heater at night and pulling maybe 50 amp hours, and that means theoretically, your battery would die within 2 days if we added this 30 amp hours per day.

A from this panel, you could in theory, stay out for five days instead of two here’s, the roof of my camper went ahead and drilled a hole you can see in here. This is actually like, 3/4 inch OSB board, so you can actually walk on the top of my camper, so this is inside my camper and the wire goes right out of the roof right in here I pulled this Hamel off my wire.

I’m gonna pull the wire up, but I was fortunate enough that I can go straight down. I drilled a hole down there to see my wires already pulled out here and it’s going to be pretty close to where I need it to come out in the battery compartment.

I have a cgb here. Cgb stands for, I think it’s, crushing grommet and bushing. So you have this grommet. You pull the wire through here, put put the grommet in there. You put this cap in it squishes the grommet around it pretty much makes a watertight seal.

This is that this end is a half-inch thread which actually requires a 3/4 inch hole that drilled in here it’s, really tight. I’m, going to put some silicone and then screw it in there. So this 3/4 inch hole is just perfect for this.

It may not be proper to just screw it into the wood, but it’s, pretty pretty darn tight. So I think we’ll, be alright. After I call it. I think it was pretty much watertight when I screwed it in there, but there’s, no reason not to put silicone around it.

Have a lot of this. This is like household caulk for windows and doors and studying wire. I’m using for a fish tape. Okay, so I’ve pulled my wire through the top here and I’m feeding on the grommet. If you want, if it’s too tight, you can use some just like water works, pretty well to help it get on there.

Then we need this little ring and the cap then, as you tighten this down, gives it a nice perfect seal. Not only will it keep it from moving and pulling out or but it’s, a water proof. I was able to come down my wall straight down from my solar panel and it came comes through here.

Oh silicone, this up so here’s, my wire, then I mounted my solar charger right here. You can’t charge a battery with a solar panel without a voltage regulator or solar controller, because a solar panel will put out say 18 to 20 volts on a 12-volt panel.

And if you hooked it directly up to the battery sure it would charge it up, but then it would overcharge it and eventually destroy your batteries. So you have to have this regulator. It’s, pretty easy.

I just have to land my solar panel here, positive negative battery, positive and negative, and the wire I’m using is a 14 gauge should be good. Since I have a 60 watt solar panel, that’s only 6 amps. So it should be okay with this 14 gauge, and this is actually the same gauge you could use like an extension cord.

An outdoor type extension cord is usually 14 gauge wire. This is from the top, or my solar panel down to here is about 14 feet or 12 feet, and then this wire to my battery is about 2 feet. If you have a choice, you need to keep this battery between the controller and the battery.

As short as possible, this battery can the wire going to the solar panel can be a little longer, because that voltage is 20 volts and you’re, going to lose less current. If you make that one longer than you would from here, because this one will only go up to 14 point something to charge the battery, so you don’t want great distances on on these wires.

It’ll. Just reduce the amount of power I was looking for a flat spot on my roof. Originally, I wanted to go this way, but there’s, a gentle slope on my roof. So this way really wasn’t very flat, so it’s.

Gon na go this way. I just stripped a 2×4, so termination is pretty easy. I’ve got a wiring diagram on the back. This is a solar X panel and I want 12 volt positive negative, so again causes negative here’s.

Another cgb should be rain tight at least and then cover all right. So I used a countersink drill bit to drill some little pre drill. Some holes now I’m, going to be very generous with the call these skewers are just barely the right size.

One thing to remember: when mounting your solar panel don’t even like this much shade or if something just sticks up. If you cover just 10 % of your panel, you can reduce the output by about 40 or 50 percent.

So you really don’t want anything to be shading it at all.