Installing 440 watts of solar panels on the roof. Not much real estate left. Now I need to find a big electric motor and I will have a hybrid.

Gary I am looking to do the same but with all the ham antennas I have up there, I have even less real estate to use than you.

quote:

Originally posted by Gary Carter:
Installing 440 watts of solar panels on the roof. Not much real estate left. Now I need to find a big electric motor and I will have a hybrid.

Is that 4- 110 watt panels? So how many have you got up there all together? I have 2-110 watt panels and a 15 watt.

8 x 55 watts = 440

Hmm Maybe I should start using my ham license. Got a tech a few years ago and have never been on the air. Maybe time to go for a general

This guy has 700 watt panels, a wind generator and a flock of huge ham antennas on his Hawkins, he is in the solar RV business,

Did that HF yagi blow down or is it angled for better propogation?

roof picture

This past winter I rewired my panels. They were wired in parallel and provided 17vdc at high noon and less the rest of the day. Rewired in series/parallel and now get 34vdc and almost 17vdc at dusk. This means the batteries start getting a charge at sunup and continue until sundown. Have even seen charging during a full moon and cloud covered day.

In order to do this you must use a MPPT controller. This takes the higher VDC and outputs the proper voltage to the batteries. The controller I use will take up to 96vdc input. I wired 4 + 4 for 34vdc. Could have rewired 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 for a 64vdc input. The higher the voltage the smaller the wire needs to be.

The panels are older 55watt panels that I owned. We can go without generator usage thru the use of our 2500 watt pure sine wave inverter. Have two golf cart batteries now, but next batteries will be lithium-ion.

I have changed to a lithium 100AH to continue this subject. We can usually do one day on one charge, but planning on a second 100Ah and also have 200 more watts of panels in the garage. Will wire them in series with those I have to give me 51 volts off the roof.

query--- ever put panels on the sides of your rv?

I haven't but have seen some full time boondockers with solar sides. The ones I have seen were on small RVs (under 25').