Camper Solar Setup Tutorial - How to Solar Power your RV, Camper Van, & Truck Camper

hey everybody its need instead for a venturi backpack it's time for another solar install if this is your first time to our channel we travel around in our custom DIY Sprinter and have as many adventures as possible this sounds like your kind of adventure be sure to subscribe and hit the notification bell let's get to work [Music] about a year ago we made a tutorial covering how we installed solar on our campervan we installed eight hundred and twenty-five watts of solar with 700 amp hours of batteries but we were met with one big problem this system was way too big for most people we heard you but this install doesn't have anything to do with our campervan my mom just bought a truck camper and we're going to teach you step by step not to make the exact same solar setup that we're going to install in this one now before we get started let me tell you where you can find the wiring diagram and the parts list for this particular project are you listening because this is very very important yes Nate we're listening go ahead and scroll down to the link in the description below they'll only take 30 seconds and we'll wait for you this link will send you to our website where you can put in your email address and we continue the wiring diagrams of course lists for this build be sure to take your spam folder because sometimes the stuff does end up there okay to explain how solar works ready-set-go sure I can do that check this out solar energy comes down from the Sun and is collected by the solar panels that energy comes through these wires down to the solar controller the solar panels make variable voltages anywhere from the teens to hundreds of volts depending on how they're wired but that's really not important right now what is important is the solar controller takes that variable voltage and converts it into a voltage that is usable by the batteries somewhere in the 13 to 15 volt range in our case that energy then goes from the charge controller down to the batteries where the energy is stored for use now how do we use that power well there's really two ways 12-volt power and 110 volt power so if you look examples on with 12 volt power items or things like 12 volt lights roof fans 12 volt also known as cigarette lighter sockets and USB outlets the other way is 110 volt power which is essentially just your common household plug things like coffee pots TVs and blenders or if you examples of that was just your normal household plug now total power to appliances can be wired weight to the battery but for one tenant the power from the battery needs to go through an inverter to change to your normal household plug this install is for a truck camper but it would be the same idea for a camper vanna as well all of that information can be found in the download in the description below now let's get to work let's start with the solar panels up top they're going to be laid out like this this is a 400 watt system we're going to be installing we're going to be using both the pre-installed factory roof rails as well as the solar panel mounting brackets to mount these panels and with a few changes to components we could have actually fit 600 watts of solar up here but we're not going to talk about that in this video but that information can be found in your email download let's start with installing the wire entry gland the parts you'll need are the entry gland positive and negative wires butyl tape a screw gun screws 1 inch hole saw roof sealant and painters tape we've already determined the location we're going to bring the wires into the camper so now we need to drill the hole assemble the intrigued land and secure it to the roof with butyl tape screws and seal it for this 400 watt setup the parts were gonna be using on the roof are gonna be for 100 watt solar panels mc4 connectors MC for wire crimper 30 amp MC for fuse and all the mounting hardware that you can find in the list in the solar book now let's start with the solar panel mounted on the front of the camper we've heard rumors of the factory installed solar panels of this particular brand of Chuck camper breaking away from the roof while driving down the road we're gonna make sure that doesn't happen attach the mounting feet to the solar panel mark the location of the mounting feet on the roof drill the holes using the mounting feet as templates clean the area where the feet will sit with alcohol fill the screw holes with epoxy and insert the anchors clean the mounting feet with alcohol apply 3m foam tape to the mounting feed place butyl tape around the perimeter of the mounting feet place the solar panel back into place screw the panel to the anchors finally liberally coat the edges of the mounting feet and screw heads with roof sealant the next three solar panels that we're gonna be mounting we're actually going to be mounting them on the factory roof rails at that truck camper these are just gonna be mounted with nuts and bolts directly to the roof rails all of this really just depends on what you have on your own setup so you have referrals use them if you don't have to find out your own way but if you have any questions about any of that kind of stuff and one suggestions please leave it in the comments below we got all of the panels mounted to the roof racks and so now we're going to put the panels up on earth let's move to the inside of the camper so the bulk of the equipment is actually going to be installed right down here this is the perfect space for both batteries the inverter and the charge controller both of the battleborn lithium batteries will be surrounded by a DIY aluminum cage the inverter will sit on top of that let's start building the cage here's the part you're gonna need for the next step you're gonna need both of your battleborn lithium batteries your inverter your 80/20 aluminum extrusion they're 80/20 corner brackets and a two and a half millimeter hex key and a solid to cut the aluminum a chop saw would be best but I'll leave this odd choice up to you we're gonna be building the cage out of this 80/20 aluminum extrusion and these 80/20 corner brackets it's all a bolt to get a unit so there's no welding necessary it's very beginner DIY friendly [Music] now that the cage is built let's go install it in the camper we've got the battery cage mounted to the floor we've got the batteries setting inside of the cage now it's time to take some measurements for the wires for the wires that are going to go to the bus bars and the shunt and all the other components you can find in your free email download so we're going to take the measurements and then go inside and start making wires okay for us to get accurate measurements from for our battery cables we're going to go ahead and install the bus bars as well as the shunt so we can see where the end goal is going to be we're gonna melt the shunt right here and the negative bus bar and the positive bus bar right there we took some measurements and now we've come into the garage to make the wires so now we're going to attach the gloves to the end of the wires [Music] [Music] this is the finished product we've got a few more wires to do but the principle is the same across all of them [Music] now it's time to install the mc4 connectors on all the wires up on top of the roof for the solar panels these are the two wires that come down from the entry gland unscrew the MCU for connector and disassemble it strip off a half inch of the sheathing on the wire position the crimp in big pin for male little pin for female insert the wire through the cap as well as the waterproof gasket and then push the pin into the MC for connector until you hear a click tighten the cap and gasket down onto the MC 4 connector we've got quite a few more connections to make but the process is essentially the same on the male and the female ends so that's the finished product of these two connections we have a few more of those to do up on the roof I'll show you the final product of that as soon as I'm finished with it but ultimately I think it's going to make way more sense if you just refer to the wiring diagram and see how we hooked it up from there and now back inside to the electrical compartment we are going to make the connection to our solar controller these are the wires that are coming in from the roof I have disconnected the power at the mc4 connectors that are up top so there's no danger here connections going to be pretty simple the PV is your solar panels and you've got a minus and a plus for positive and negative I've left a little bit of slack in the wires I'm pretty sure it's going to be mounted right here but we have a few more components that are going to be mounted in here as well so we're not going to mount it just yet I want to get everything test fitted first so we're going to be putting this right here for now and now we're gonna make the battery connection battery connections pretty much the same as the solar panels you've got a positive and negative for your battery and these are going to connect to the positive and negative bus bars a quick note about some of the fuses you could use in the system we're going to be holding off on some of our fuses because they have not arrived yet but they can all be found in the solar wiring diagram in your ebook download [Music] the solar controller is going to be mounted over here in this general area but we have a few other components that we need to find out exactly where they're going to sit before we mount this permanently so that's just going to stay there for now so I know it doesn't really look like it right now but we are actually very very close to being done now there's a few things that we needed to talk about before we move on so right now we have DC power coming from the solar panels into the solar controller into the batteries the batteries are hooked up to the inverter so we have AC power ready to go now this is where it starts to get a little bit tricky because everybody's set up from here on out is going to be different from this point back everything is pretty much the same everybody's gonna have solar panels everybody's gonna have inverter the batteries all that kind of stuff now where it gets tricky is if you're doing this from scratch in a camper van or something like that where you're building the entire electrical system this is where you're gonna start going from inverter to all of your plugs as well as your bus bar to your fuse block and stuff like that all of that information can be found again in the email download but what we're going to have to do now is since this isn't a camper that has a already established wiring system installed we're gonna have to start making very specialized connections that have to do exactly with this truck camper now this truck camper is set up like most RVs and so if you have an RV and you're wanting to set up this particular setup definitely hang around because it's going to be very very similar if you're in it if you're building a camper van from scratch this is also going to be helpful but what's gonna be even more helpful is some of those wiring diagrams in that e-book so the only other connections that we need to make right now for the AC power we have the AC out and the AC in ACN is going to be your shore power AC out is going to be to your plugs your AC breaker box whatever the case is and that in your particular setup up there pause the bus bar negative bus bar that's what's going to run to all of your accessories so that's going to likely run to a fuse block and then from that fuse block that's going to go off to all of your branch circuits like your lights your fans all that kind of stuff so we are going to run all of this stuff to the AC end they out and going to set all this up to the pre-existing set up that is over here everything over in this particular RV is set up over here it looks like a mess right now I've already gotten into it a little bit to find out exactly what I'm dealing with but the way I think it's going to be less confusing is if I actually just go through and do it and then show you what I did and try to relate it back to some of those wiring diagrams so I'm going to get to work [Music] we just finished up a bunch of wiring so let's talk through it this solar panel and that solar panel are wired in series and then that solar panel and that solar panel are wired in series both of those series are then wired in parallel and that wire runs down through the entry gland through the roof down into the camper the wires come through the roof down through this wire loom through the kitchen console through this bunch of wires this bunch of wires this bunch of wires all the way over to the charge controller charge controller then takes that energy from the solar panels and converts it into a form of energy usable by the batteries from the charge controller the wires go through this wire and this wire do the positive and negative busbars and then from the positive and negative bus bars it loops around and goes to the batteries where that energy is then stored for use so that's one way we charge the batteries let's talk about Shore power sure power is when we're plugged into a wall outlet like this and then this cable goes to the shore power connection on the outside of the camper which then connects to this wire which runs through here into this box through here all the way around around here and finally into the inverter charger right there the inverter charger then takes that AC power that we're on shore power the charger converts it into DC power which then charges the batteries underneath the third way that we can charge our batteries is through the alternator on the truck but we're not going to talk about that in this particular video we're going to save that for another video now let's talk about how we can use all of that power that we've stored up the power in the batteries is stored as DC power from the batteries that runs to the bus bars back through these cables over here to the distribution block or your fuse block all of these fuses automotive style fuses that's what's going to be powered directly off of the battery with nothing in between from the DC fuse block that's gonna power things like the water pump over there lights up here this fridge can actually run off of DC power the USB ports that are up front all of that kind of stuff is powered directly off of the batteries now if you're wanting to power a household plug like that one you're going to need to the inverter let's talk about that the inverter simply takes the DC power stored in the batteries and converts it to AC power so batteries to household plug essentially from the inverter it goes out through this cable right here ours is yellow in this case to this breaker box now this breaker box is essentially the exact same circuit that you're going to have in your house it is a 15 amp AC circuit from there it goes out to over here where it actually ties into all of the AC plugs throughout the entire camper now AC power normal household plug that's gonna be things like a blender coffee maker electric hedge trimmers anything like that so now let's talk about how we know how much power we have how much power we're using and how much power we're bringing in this right here is the shunt so think of this as the monitor for all of the electricity in this system so everything whether it's AC or DC powered is coming through this so it can be monitored from the batteries this wire right here is the power coming from the batteries and then this wire right here is running appear to the display so this display shows us the current output and the current monitoring information from that shunt now this is just a kind of a general overview but to get the actual detailed information this app that connects through bluetooth to your phone and shows all of the vital statistics of the system so if you're doing like a campervan build or anything like that this is kind of where the information starts to get a little bit irrelevant for you but hang on because it might still help out because you're gonna go from your positive bus bar to your fuse block you're gonna go from this this breaker down here off of the AC side to all of your plugs everything like that remember though that's in the wiring diagram in the e-book download but right now we're gonna talk about some of the specific things to this particular truck camper that we had to change in order for this system to work so let's take a look at the Power Distribution panel of this particular truck camper so for this particular truck camper you're able to run things off of AC that are the outlets the refrigerator the air conditioner the microwave and the Aldi system which is let's just call that the furnace because that's kind of sort of what it is so all of these are the AC breakers and this one up here was the one for the the normal household plug circuits and that's all we wanted to run off of our solar panel array things like the refrigerator the the refrigerator actually runs off of AC power DC power or propane we never want to run it off of our batteries because that's a that's a that's a waste of energy running it through the inverter to power it so we never wanted to use that we cannot run the air conditioner off of this particular setup this solar panel array is too small to power a super power hungry air conditioner and it just would not work so we wanted to make sure we never accidentally used these two circuits on our solar panel array and so what we did is we basically isolated this breaker let's talk about how we did that if you'll remember from just a few minutes ago this is where I said the AC came out through this breaker back over this direction this is that same wire over here now this white wire coming out was the same wire that was right back here that was connected to this breaker right here which was all of the outlets it is totally removed from here so this one is actually doing nothing this way there's nothing hooked up to this one at all but we wanted to be able to run all of this other stuff like the even the furnace the microwave the air conditioner and the fridge whenever were plugged into Shore power so this one this 30 amp main is the shore power so Shore power is still powering all of this by by totally bypassing the inverter charger so from the shore power coming in it's going into this particular junction box and from this junction box it's going over to the charger which we talked about that earlier that's how we charge the batteries right and from the other side it's coming out and it's going up this way so we have spliced this wire so the short power coming from the side of the truck camper going into this junction box one wire is going off to charge the batteries the other wire is going into this power distribution block to power the air conditioner the microwave everything like that when this truck camper and most other campers in general there's something when I'm called a converter and what a converter does is it takes AC power and powers DC power directly from the converter AC power in to the converter and then it powers the lights directly without the use of a battery since we have a inverter charger as well as the batteries we needed to be able to get around the converter on this one having the converter still hooked up created an awkward loop of energy and it was just there's a few redundancies and basically it just made wiring kind of messy so that was something that needed to be undone on this particular system so on this particular truck camper these two screws come off in the converter is in this panel right below it it is very very simple to just unhook the AC power as well as the DC power from each side of it wrap the wires back up and put them back in there and totally disconnect that from the whole system we just totally took it out of play because it was just a redundancy that we didn't need it was making our wiring more messy and that finishes up this solar build special shout out to battle born batteries for sponsoring this build and for wanting to be a part of our journey to educate everybody on how they can build their own DIY solar setup we know we covered a lot of information in a very short amount of time so if you have any questions or comments about the solar setup or your own solar setup be sure to leave them in the comments below until next time [Music] you you

Channel: EXPLORIST life - DIY Campers

Views: 716,636

Rating: 4.8490686 out of 5

Keywords: camper solar setup, camper solar, solar setup, camper solar install, camper solar kit, camper solar panel installation, camper solar panel setup, camper solar power, camper solar power system, camper solar system, diy camper solar system, rv solar setup, camper van solar installation, solar tutorial how to install, campervan solar, campervan solar system, rv solar install, rv solar panel installation, rv solar power, rv solar power system, rv solar system installation

Id: Ht1kl37pJ2E

Length: 24min 33sec (1473 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 08 2018

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