Is solar worth it?

Don,
It's fairly simple to swap out....American RV can do this for you. Important though to get a panel or panels big enough to handle your needs in winter which is reason you need to know the max draw of your various 12 volt devices.

I assume you have the full camper not the shell model . Fan, lights, water pump - minimum use. Same for the furnace maybe a couple of hours per day.
Fridge though is the amp hog.

11.7 volts means the Sure Power probably disconnected the alternator from charging the camper batteries (no warning when this happens). The fridge probably auto shuts off when voltage drops below 12 volts. Results spoiled food.

Our Eagle is mounted full time. Driving it around 2-3 hours a day didn't top off the battery. The Trimetric "tells" me the battery loses charge over time just sitting in the carport. The new 100 watt roof mounted panel does top it off as long as I park truck in the sun.

We don.t have the Iota power converter so installed a small 1.25 amp charger/ maintainer ( battery tender) to keep the battery charged when parked. Sometimes week at a time. Works well.
 
With the 1.25 amp Battery Tenders, after the green light has been on solid for a couple of weeks, remove it for long enough to allow the unit to return to absorption mode (both red & green lights blinking). Otherwise, these units seem to not maintain AGM batteries in good shape.

I have used Battery Tenders for at least 10 yrs and lost several batteries before settling on this process. The batteries I lost were AGM's. It may be the BT's were designed for liquid cells which take a slightly different charging profile than AGMs.

Both the Zamp and the IOTA with IQ4 perform a procedure like this automatically which is where I got the idea.

YMMV My $.02

Paul
 
Good point Paul,
When I bought the "Battery Doctor" charger/maintainer it was designed to work with AGM technology. The Battery Tender brand uses different technology and isn't as efficient (per the Battery Doc engineer).

I primarily use it the day before leaving on a trip to run the fridge and top off the battery though it thinks 13.6 volts is full. Trimetric says bat 96% full.

Don,
The following chart was made up by member DrJ in his post "measured Four Wheel Camper Power use" (click on link to review)

110 liter Compressor fridge 4.2-4.8 amps per hour
(That's the big one that FWC uses)
Heater 2.5-3 amps per hour
Water pump 2.6-3.2 amps per hour
(depending on volume of water)
Old incandescent overhead lights 2.8 amps per side or 5.6 amps for both sides
New LED overhead lights 0.4 amps per side or 0.8 amps for both sides
LED floor lights 0.1 amps
LED flood lights 2.8 amps
Porch light 0.2 amps
(Replaced with LED)
Fantastic Fan
0.2 amps at 10% fan speed
0.5 amps at 50% fan speed
1.5 amps at 100% fan speed
FWC battery sensor, IOTA IQ4 smart charger less than 0.1 amps - not measureable.

LED light replacement is the best and cheapest way to decrease battery useage. The new ones use 1/7 of the power of the old ones.
Furnance uses less amp hours than I suspected.
I would have guessed 5-6 amps per hour

================================================================================
Jim 2 cents worth:
If you have the 65 Waeco amp draw is probably around 3-3.5 amps. If unit is running 75% of the time it is drawing more amps than
the panel is putting out.

Recommendation: replace the 80 watt with 2- 100 watt Renology (or equivalent) bendable - 4 pounds each - solar panels mounted on the roof. That would produce 5 amps in the desert in Nov - Feb. I like the Bendable because of low weight (I have a damaged lower back). The standard aluminum framed panels are too heavy even with the struts for me.

You could also add one Renology panel as a portable and plug it into the second plug on the back wall if you ordered two plugs with your Eagle. You could store it under the mattress when traveling. Angled toward the sun would give an additional 5.7 amps input.
 
Seams like your ShurePower battery separator is defective or working as designed by not allowing a charge to the camper battery while driving. I have never been a fan of the separator.

Friend has a Hawk and could never get the camper battery to charge. FWC sent him to a local RV repair place and they said it was wired wrong and also it should be located in the engine bay. They hooked it up right but it still did not charge the camper battery. I installed a shurepower battery isolator and it has worked flawless for him ever since.

So if you are driving a few hours and your battery is still under 12 volts, then that means there is no charge going to your camper battery. you can go at it suspecting the separator is not working for you.

You have two different problems and don't look at them as the same:
1) separator is not working to charge your camper battery while driving.
2) your amp draw usage is greater than what your solar can replace.

Contributing factors for number 2 above as mentioned by others could be hurting because of a combination of bad grounds, loose or improper connections, too small of wiring to carry loads properly. Because of those factors your system could be handicapped. one or more parts of your solar system has a failure and would need to be tracked down. Others with similar systems show success would be my clue that I have a faulty part in the system. Don't rule out the battery being that part either.
 
Good points PaTrick.

Just driving around with no load - my alternator maintains 12.9 volts.

I forgot to ask Don how many days he camps engine off before battery drops under 12 volts. In my case with a 2-1/2 year old battery its 36 hours to 12.1 volts, running the engine for 60 minutes every 12 hours (before I had a panel on the roof).

Running 60 minutes at idle will bring my voltage up to 12.9 (compressor fridge cycling on and off).
 
One comment on the Surepower separator. You should check with that company. There was a recall on their separator back in the summer of 2011.
They will be able to give you the range of serial #s and models that had been recalled.
Mine in my 2009 Bobcat was a recall. I sent it back for the refund and Marty at ATC sent me the isolator I now use that has worked fantastic.

There is a whole thread started by " Uglyscout " from around July of 2011. You might find that and review the info as it has the company's recall info.
Frank
 
Easy way to check when your battery is low is to just start the engine. I immediately see 13.7 or higher on my voltmeter in the camper when the truck is running now matter how low the camper battery is (unless of course I have my battery switch to camper only). Whats your alternator putting out?
 
A couple of questions come to mind:

1. Wouldn't it be safer to assume no charging current comes from the truck to the camper while the sun shines with a solar panel since "water does not flow up hill"? Could the solar panel charging voltage at the batteries stop all current from the truck since the voltage at the camper would be the same or higher than the truck battery/alternator?

2. Does the solar charge controller in the camper use a rheostat to control camper battery charging voltage instead of a transformer? Rheostats just "pinch the pipe" and so a hypothetical 80 watt panel producing 20 volts/4 amps (amps x volts = watts) would only deliver 60 watts/15 volts/4 amps to the battery after a rheostat style charge controller.

3. Is the battery "energy cost" to charge and discharge around 10% and so 4 amp-hours in is only 3.5 amp-hours out?

Every device could test correctly and work correctly but not keep up with a compressor refrig if the solar charge controller uses a rheostat and the solar panel charging voltage backs out the truck charging by equalizing the voltages and the battery "cost" is 10%.

Revisions: After posting my questions, I continued research (compulsive problem analyzer) and found:
Solar panels are fixed amp devices not fixed volts as the question implies (batteries are "fixed" voltage). As luck would have it, the amps come out the same and the "80 watts panel" are still only 60 watts at the battery and no rheostat is needed to control voltage. The conservative estimate is to use 20 volts at the maximum wattage and so an "80 watt" panel could also be named a "4 amp" device with variable voltage at full sun. Solar panels produce a steady amp rate and increase the voltage until those amps get "pushed" in (up to the panels maximum voltage after which power generation stops, around 20 volts). The amp rate depends on the amount of sun and so clouds could produce 2 amps but the voltage goes up until the 2 amps are pushed into the system. The panels effect on truck charging the camper batteries would depend on the voltage balance between the multiple devices but the panel amps would appear to go into the system first and the truck charging only if the voltage balance is favorable. Since compressor refrig's consume 3+ amps and the sun supply (daylight hours, clouds, sun angel) is limited the power supply is tight with an 80 watt/4 amp panel.
 
iowahiker said:
1. Wouldn't it be safer to assume no charging current comes from the truck to the camper while the sun shines with a solar panel since "water does not flow up hill"? Could the solar panel charging voltage at the batteries stop all current from the truck since the voltage at the camper would be the same or higher than the truck battery/alternator?
Click to expand...
Looks like you might have found some clarity on this, but if it helps I think I asked a similar question and got some information on Expedition Portal.
 
I get my camper back tomorrow and we'll see what they did.
Upthread question - I typically drive a couple of hours a day.
Attached as a "picture" is data from my last trip that I provided FWC - every morning and evening I recorded the temp inside the camper, fridge temp, voltage, and notes about sun and driving. As I've said upthread, energy use is the fridge, about 5 mins a day of LED lights, 5 -10 minutes of the stove, no heater, no other 12v usage.

View attachment voltage data.tiff
 
Your TIFF file opened up in Photoshop. JPEG format would be easy to read. Here is a copy in JPEG format of what I saw.

voltage-data.jpg
 
Battery is way too low to be of any good and takes a downward slide into dead range. Most refer have a low shut off and that could be why your temp is raising. Looks like there is no or very little amps charge getting to the battery while driving or with the panel. Or you have a incredible huge drain (short) that is sucking the life out of your battery. Maybe you do have a huge drain that is taking too many amps.

Without being there to look things over with a meter, it could be anything faulty in the system. I wonder if the truck alternator is hooked up to your camper battery? At this point the battery's life has been shortened for being too low and it just could be that the battery has gone flat. This could have been cause by a faulty charging system.

Hope the charging part gets fixed, either the solar and the alternator system, then consider putting the battery on a full automatic battery charger at 10 amps. But it may not take a charge then put it on 2 amps for a while until it comes up. Then go with the 10 amps until the automatic charger turns off. Then switch over to 2 amps for 24 hours to pack the battery for a fuller charge.
 
http://www.iotaengineering.com/pplib/dlsmanl.pdf
On page 3 of the IOTA manual, you must have either the Dual Voltage Jack or the IQ4 installed to charge your batteries. Without one of these, your IOTA will power all your 12v appliances but will not charge the batteries. Best choice is the IQ4 for worry-free charging. Buy the IQ4 for about $25, it's worth it. Otherwise, you will have to manually monitor whether to plug in the jumper to charge the batteries or unplug it to use the batteries.

Assuming you have the voltage sensing battery separator:
http://www.fourwh.com/batteryseparator1315.pdf
"If the drain on the charging system by the auxiliary or main battery bank reduces the system voltage below 12.4-12.9 volts, the BATTERY SEPARATOR will disconnect the battery banks from each other,thus protecting the respective battery banks from excessive drain."

If the battery voltage is too low, you will hear clicking of the voltage separator relay as it attempts to connect the batteries to your truck alternator, then clicks off when it detects the voltage is too low.

After Fri 8pm, your camper battery voltage was too low for the truck alternator to supply power to charge the battery. No amount of driving will charge your battery until you charge your battery by another means. This happened to me on my third camping trip after getting my Hawk this July.

At this point, I would recommend attaching a automotive battery charger dirwctly to your batteries set to AGM setting to fully charge your batteries before using any appliance, light etc. Or buy and install the IQ4 and allow it to fully charge your batteries before using them again.

Install at least a voltmeter on your batteries so you can monitor what is happening. As you are going solar, the Trimetric would be a good, although expensive choice, but even one of the $10 voltmeters mentioned in other threads here would be a good idea so that you don't let the battery voltage drop below 12.4 before running your truck to charge it. Don't forget to configure your solar charge controller to AGM batteries before use.

Paul
 
Paul that is my gripe with the battery separator that your battery won't get any charge from the alternator when your camper battery goes below the minimum voltage. Where as a battery isolator it does not care it will still give you amps from the alternator.

Kilroy on the IOTA there is what looks like a phone plug in. That is where you plug in the smart charger. FWC back in the day was not providing a jumper that when plugged in would give you higher amps that would boil out a battery over time. Look for that plug and see if there is a cord plugged in and on the other end is a small box.
 
Wow based on Don's chart it appears the battery is not receiving any "juice" from either solar or alternator?
I don't have the IOTA so don't know how system is wired.
Can you put a multi-meter on the output side to see if it is functioning?

I wonder reason the factory or dealer can't duplicate the condition to fix it?
 
Solar worth it...? I would say so, been on the road for a few weeks now, spent two weeks in Death Valley, 4 days and nights at the Racetrack Playa without starting the truck. Here is my rig in max solar harvest mode. During the day, I point the 40W panel on the air dam at the noon sun position and then put my slide out 100W on the extension cord and track it as time and workloads permit ( Photography ), all daytime loads are ran off of the 100AH battery that is connected to this 140W array. Then in the Winter I tip the roof and point the 200W roof array at the sun and that becomes my night power source, another 100AH battery. Even with running the fridge a lot, the heater, the LED lights, charging my phone, using the 4G cell booster, I have tons of power, ever-ever below 12.4V on either battery.

I know the temptation of getting a factory solar install at the time of purchase is all the rage, but I advice against it and just have the camper pre-wired with a well thought out gauge of wire and then get a real handle on what your real power needs will be.

Oh, and gas fridge, you could not pay me to go back to one, I camp level about 1/3rd the time so it never really worked for me....
 

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Kodachrome - that's a pretty cool solar machine you got there. What various solar panels are you using and how are the flexible panels attached to the roof? Where do you store the portal panel shown in the front of your truck? How is your air dam mounted? I've been thinking of doing something similar. What is the rod running along the front of your roof? I have about 10 more questions but will start with those!
 
Don, when you get it back from American RV run the same tests you did in your first chart to make sure the volts stay up around
12.7-14 while driving or parked in the sun.
 
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