We designed and then worked together with the NRVTA in Texas over the winter of 2021/2 to upgrade our system to new heights. Literally. At least, different heights. Yes, we drove to Texas! It was 80 degrees on Christmas day! This was an amazing experience, with fun, hardworking people. We were also part of a…
Category: Solar
Solar – System Updates as of 2021
We’ve been running now on this system for several years, and during that time, we’ve done a couple of upgrades, and learned a lot. First, we added two batteries, and we’re now up to 1200ah. It’s made a huge difference in our energy consumption, we can go a lot longer on a charge. Our generator…
Solar – Adding two more panels on the roof.
After having run with our solar for a year, and doing some measuring, we decided to add two more 180 watt panels to our roof. That means we’re now at: 12 x 180 watts = 2160 total watts of sun gathering power Before: After: I’m actually amazed at how much it’s helped increase our…
Solar – A small efficient setup for Nancy and John’s Raptor
We worked together with Nancy and John to come up with a plan for their trailer. They don’t full time in theirs, they mostly go out for a few days in a row. They do stay for a few weeks on occasion. The main goal was just to keep generator time to a minimum for…
Solar – Our Generator Gets Some Love
On our last Solar related post, we mentioned the issue with our Onan generator. I’ll try to explain it better here. So, we have a Cummins Onan QC 5500 Generator. Many RV’s out there are equipped with some version of this generator, so it’s nothing really special, but we wanted to be able to utilize…
It works!
Phase Three: PROFIT! But before that… We ran into an issue as we were nearing the end of the installation of our components. It just wasn’t working as expected. The Quattros would come on and pass through shore power, but when shore power was disconnected, they wouldn’t start inverting. Also, they were misbehaving when the…
Solar – The Other Components
Phase Two: Install Inverters, Charge Controllers, Wiring, Breakers, Switches, Batteries and Etcetera. We made a project board the same dimensions as the wall in our front pass-through, so we could play around with positioning components trying to come up with the best fit and flow. Here’s some of our early ideas: After this, we found…
Solar Panel Installation
Phase One: Collect Underpants Install Solar Panels Here’s the roof diagram again: They are Grape Solar 180 watt panels. They were the best bang for the buck for us, the form factor was correct, and they are assembled in Eugene, OR.
An introduction to our Solar project
So let’s set up the conditions for this project. We’re both technical folks, currently Nathan works remote and Heather is working on other projects (like this blog) that require computer needs. We wanted a system to support a “mostly” normal lifestyle for us off the grid. In correlation with designing our system, we did some…
Albany, OR… and we pick up our Solar project parts.
After Seattle, we traveled south to Albany, OR, to see Nate’s sister Janine and her family. We spent our evenings with them visiting for dinner and seeing the kids. We read bedtime stories and played board games. On one occasion Janine took us to the Historic Albany Carousel. Each animal on the carousel is hand carved, and…