PORTABLE SOLAR WIN OR FAIL?!? New System Test Drive!! (Off Grid, RV & Boondocking)

 

PORTABLE SOLAR WIN OR FAIL?!? New System Test Drive!! (Off Grid, RV & Boondocking)

[, Music ]. So how did portable solar work out for us this summer? Common question on our channel for those of you folks who’ve, been following us for a while. You know that we picked this up. I think about late June early July and we had a few simple goals for those folks who are new to our channel.

We’ll, give you a quick tour of those goals, but if you get a chance watch the other video we did on. Why we chose to go with portable solar power? One of the reasons we bought this property was. It has a fantastic South View, which we knew would be pivotal when we decided to go with solar.

But when we arrived here, first of all, we didn’t understand our power needs and we didn & # 39. T really have the understanding of what solar components would fit us near and long-term. The problem with solar, doesn’t upgrade well, so you might go out and buy this or that component pretty soon.

You have to throw it away or sell it and buy a new component and go through that process, a bunch of times it’s, not worth it. So we started our journey with this small Honda, 3,000 watt generator, and it worked really well for us for about 10 months.

In fact, it’s still working well for us today. The only thing was, the Sun was shining and we just couldn’t stand to run the generator knowing we could be picking up solar power, but Solar is a little complicated even today.

It still has a lot of little nuances that you have to get right. Otherwise the system won’t work properly, so this small portable kit was perfect for us because it allowed us to plug and play. We can capture just a little bit of the Sun each day and offset our generator use.

Some of the things we were going to do with the solar panel include charging our cell phones charging our laptops, keeping our RV battery, topped off and charging the camera or shooting this with Oh small detail.

So we’re, actually developing an off-grid property and we’re working on building a home. So ultimately we’re, going to need a much larger solar setup. But for now we’re, basically full-time boondocking.

In our RV, so our power needs are kind of like that full-time boondocking in an RV, as it turns out when we have all of those devices plugged in they take about five amps at 12 volts DC in full Sun. This panel has been generating between seven and eight amps of current, so all said and done we’re coming out ahead.

We also picked up a few batteries in the spring secondhand and we wanted to keep this battery bank charged up until we were ready to use it. So that panel is a little bit small, but since we weren’t drawing off the bank, it was pretty easy to keep it topped off.

We just didn’t want to risk damaging the batteries and before we had a chance to use them because it’s, so easy to move this portable panel. Using the battery clips, we could unplug it from our RV and plug it right into the battery bank, and it was perfect.

Would we buy this system again if we had to do it all over? I think the answer is yes, because I got a chance to test our play with the zamp system, which is actually a higher price point than the go power unit which to you, solar folks, up there almost seems offensive.

I’m sure and I & # 39. Ll say that the zamp system is a little more rigid and the components are just just a squeak higher quality. But whether or not that’s, valuable to you. I guess you & # 39. Ll have to decide that for yourself I have not tried a lower pricepoint model like a Renault G, but I have tried the Harbor Freight models and I will say that amp 4 amp they’re, not even close to the same.

You will get solar power using a Harbor Freight type system, but don’t, expect the high output and Express expect some voltage and some losses in your lines. The cables are extremely small and they’re.

Not I think it’s up it’s a polycrystalline panel, so they’re, not as efficient. So, overall, I would say that this system is a quality system, but you folks out there, who have other systems, feel free to chime in and kind of.

Tell us your experience with what you’re working with. As for the quality of the construction and the components on this panel, I would say they’re satisfactory. I would say they’re good enough. I wouldn’t say that they’re over engineered or overdone, but the legs seen plenty sturdy.

The wire size is definitely adequate, which this is rated at 10 amps of current, which you won’t, get quite that much out of this smaller panel. But overall, we’ve left this panel out in all weather conditions, even high winds.

We haven’t had to sandbag the thing or do anything exceptional to keep it standing upright it hasn’t blown over, which has been a concern with some of the other lower priced solar panels and like the connector system, is adequate.

A lot of people have commented that there are other connectors that are maybe more adequate, but the Anderson, I believe it’s called style. Connector seems quality. It’s, not something you’re, going to break it’s, not fragile, and overall, I feel like the solar or the charge controller mount which does pivot, which makes reading it very easy that’s.

A very nice feature, so it there are portable systems that are larger than this, and I feel like if you went with something like that, you’re, probably pushing the portable window. This is this, is portable Alissa can carry it.

It’s light enough, but if you went with something bigger than this, like the zamp, I think they make a 200 watt system. It’s too heavy. It gets to be a tank, and so you might want to maybe move towards something more permanent installation type.

Would we go any smaller than this portable system? I would say, probably not the only reason I would even go a little smaller than this. Even like a hundred watt system is, if all we were trying to do, was kind of maintain like a battery maintainer or maybe only using LED lighting.

But if you’re doing anything beyond that using pumps, fans heaters or charging electronics, this is really as small as you can go. I’m, generating around 7 amps of current. If you go any smaller than that, you’re, going to be Net Zero and you’ll, be running your generator.

So overall we would say that the portable solar system was a win for us. If you’d, like to learn more about our off-grid home, what Oh Alisa have something to say: yeah behind you, Oh behind me, yeah! Oh what about this? I think they want to know about this.

Then yeah! You! You guys want to know about those, I think they do yeah. I guess we could tell them. What do you think? Should we tell him the hurt all right? Let’s. Tell him: okay, because you of folks helped us get that last solar video, that we did so much exposure go Power got wind of it and they contacted us and offered to send us a version of their solar extreme kit.

Now it’s extreme in the sense of 12-volt systems. They work a lot with RVs boats and work trucks, so they offer to send us a version of that kit to help us get through winter. They reassure us that they’re.

Actually, working on some components to solve the problem with solar that we have and that is scalability can’t. Tell you much about it. They haven’t really told us much, but they assure us they’re working on a solution, but for the time being they sent us this system, which is going to quadruple our solar capacity, which should help us get through the winter.

To help us collect more of the Sun that we do get, we now have a 30 amp charge controller that is compounded by our 10 M. So we’re, actually able to collect somewhere around 40 amps of Sun. They also sent us an inverter charger.

It’s a little smaller. It’s 2,000 watts, but it should adequately run everything we need to operate as a bonus. It’s, actually a charger also, so we actually have our generator wired into this guy. So, on those cloudy days which we’ve, already had quite a few, we can run our generator to top off our battery bank.

So we’ve, been able to wire up the battery bank to use the inverter and the larger solar array we’ll talk about that in just a second, but we have about 1400 amp hours of capacity here. This is a secondhand battery bank.

We won & # 39. T really encourage people to buy these types of things. If you & # 39, re have a lot of adversity to risk, but we wanted to have something on hand so that we could use solar. And this is going to be working well for us, probably for about two years or so.

But we do have to do some reconditioning on the batteries. Go Power also sent us 480 watts in 12-volt solar panels, so we now have four times as much power as we did with our small portable array. As you can see, this setup not very portable.

If your RV boondocking, though you might want to look at the system like this as a roof mount system, it would fit pretty well on a larger RV or a travel trailer for us. It’s, generating about 26 to 27 amps at 12, volts in full sunlight, which is a considerable amount of power.

In fact, it’s, opened up doors for us that weren’t open before we & # 39. Ll talk about that in a later video, but we did upgrade to a chest freezer. This may not be a really large array, but it’s, definitely adequate for our needs and for those folks out there who are thinking about starting off grid.

This might be a place for you to start granted. Their systems are a little bit higher on the price point, but their quality definitely seems to be there. There are folks, though, that feel that go power is overpriced.

So definitely do your research and shopping and ask around but do keep in mind that cheap isn’t, always good. If you’re investing in solar and you want the system to repay you over the next 15 to 20 years.

Really factored that into your decision, we see a lot of systems that are inadequate or poorly designed and they’re, failing very quickly the thing about solar is it’s kind of a marathon, not a sprint, so it’S not going to collect a tremendous amount of power every single day, but it’s going to produce power for you for years.

The problem is, you have to pay for all that power today, it’s kind of like paying your power bill for the next 20 years upfront. So if you’re going to go down this path, make sure to do your research and invest in something that you perceive to be quality.

Setting up this system was really straightforward. Go power panels come wired already with mc4 connectors, which are a standard connector in the solar industry. They also include these Y harnesses and their panels are 12 volts, so these are wired in parallel to add the amps together.

If you had to upgrade – or you wanted to upgrade to a 24 volt system, you could continue using these panels by first wiring them in series and then wiring them in parallel. So it’s, a very simple and straightforward system for us to set up the wiring.

The inverter and everything was also very easy. With their inverter install kit, they include a fuse and everything you need to get up and running quickly. One of the reasons this inverter charger is such a critical component to this system is our solar panels.

Don’t have enough amps to equalize our battery bank, but this inverter charger can and with their inverter charger remote, which is not included. You would actually have to buy this separately, but they did include it for us.

It actually gives you the ability to equalize your battery bank, and it also has a multistage charger, so it can take all take care of all those chores for you for the people who are long-term, RVing or boondocking.

This system really does seem more than adequate. For that setup, however, if you’re thinking about living off-grid and your working your way toward more of a cabin type system, one issue that I see with the go power, solar charge controllers and their inverters – is they don’t? Have the ability to remote start your generator and for those folks who are living off-grid? That’s, a really important feature? We’ve, already communicated that to go powers, so hopefully they’ll, listen to us and the work on getting that integrated into their products.

This system really isn’t, something that we expect to use for a long time. But we’re, really thankful to go power for offering to let us test drive it, because it allows us to offset even more of our generator use.

So we’re excited to be using. It will kind of update you along the way and let you know how it’s working for us here. In the winter we’re, probably going to have a lot less Sun. So it’s, going to get challenging to harvest solar power, so we’ll, probably be running the generator more, which we’re okay with, but we’re living off-grid.

We love these things. These are kind of fun challenges for us to work on. We do have 750 watts and panels that someone generously gave us, but we’re waiting to use those, because we don’t have a suitable charge controller, which is one of those main complaints that we have about working your way into Solar, we could go out and spend six to seven hundred dollars and get a really high quality name brands controller, but we’d, really rather wait on that.

So those panels are unfortunately, sitting in storage waiting for the right time, but again go Power. Has assured us they’re working on this challenge. We’re kind of excited to see what they come up with.

So thanks for joining us for this video. If you want to learn more about those portable systems, you can check out our blog. We actually have a really great blog post, where we talk about kind of the decision making process that we went through and how we came to that conclusion and then later on down the road we’ll, probably talk a little bit more about the Solar setup that we end up with if you enjoyed watching this video, and you want to learn more about our home setting project off-grid home setting project.

Please subscribe to our YouTube channel and someone who commented on one of our videos recently I want to thank you. It reminded us to remind you to give the video a thumbs up. So if you have a chance, please give this video a thumbs up, follow us on our Facebook and our Instagram too.

We’ll, put links to all that stuff in the description below we & # 39. Ll, see you next time: [ Music, ]