- Hey everybody. It's Nate and Steph from explorist.life. We teach people how to build DIY campers. Welcome back to episode number 24 in our Ford Transit
camper van build series. - In our last episode,
we installed a roof rack. And in this episode, we're gonna be installing solar panels. So let's get started. (upbeat music) - The goal here was to maximize
the amount of solar panels and wattage that we could
fit onto our transit. Now, I have a few different sizes here and if you stick around
to the end of the video I wanna talk about some
of the stats and specs of these panels and how it
works whenever these three different types of panels
are in the same solar array. These panels are all from Rich Solar. This one is a 200 watt, this one is a 55 watt, and these ones are 35 watts. And this 200 watt panel from Rich Solar has been on the market for quite a while. And it's been kind of my go-to for a panel that gets mounted
side to side on a van roof. It just fits really, really nicely. And these two I'm
particularly excited about because they're brand new to the market. We asked Rich Solar if they
would be interested in making custom sized panels for our van, sure, but ultimately so that
you guys could also have these same panels for
the same functionality that we're having on our van. So these will be available to purchase. And the idea behind them was to have the 200 watt panels laterally and then have this panel
here with a max air fan and then this panel on
the other side as well. And then same thing with
the air conditioner. Panel, air conditioner panel. So everything is nice, sleek, compact and we can really utilize
every single square foot on our van roof. So these Rich Solar panels,
I'm really excited about. We've been talking to them
for months at this point. It's awesome to have them in hand, but I'm more excited to actually get the cross braces on there so we can get them pre-wired
and get them on the roof. The Unaka roof rack
comes with some spacers to put between the cross
braces and the solar panels to lift them up so that they fit flush with the top of the roof rack. The bolts connecting the solar
panels to the cross braces get Anti Seize applied to them before tightening them
to an appropriate torque. Then we measured from
the ends of the panels to the ends of the
cross braces on each end to make sure that the
panels were centered. (upbeat music) For the panels that don't
go all the way across like the 55s and the 35s. I have the 55s here for example, the cross braces, they have a cutout here and that's by design because
whenever we designed this, the clearance between the
fan and the air conditioner was pretty small. We made that as small as we could so that we could fit as much solar as we possibly could on there. So that meant that
there wasn't enough room to have a bottom on here. So as you're kind of handling
these they flex a little bit. But that's okay. It's
kind of how we made it. And you're just going to be
able to see that come together and why that's important. Once we actually get this
stuff up on the roof. (upbeat music) Now we have the solar panels
mounted to the cross rails and it's starting to take shape. Which is pretty exciting to kind of see the vision come to life. So for these, we have the
200 watt panels up front and these two panels are
gonna be wired in series. Behind that we have the two 55 watt panels and we're gonna have the
max air fan is right here. These two panels are going
to be wired in series. And then lastly, we
have this 35 watt panel and this 35 watt panel and the nomadic air conditioner
is going to live right here. And these two panels are
going to be wired in series. So like solar panels are
going to be wired in series with these three series
strings wired in parallel going to our solar isolator. And that's roughly how
this is going to work. And here is a diagram. So you can kind of see on paper because I'm about to do the wiring, but it's probably gonna
get a little messy. Now for the crossbars,
these get full angles. And like I said earlier,
these are cut out. And you can kind of see that
we have pretty low clearance between the fan and the air conditioner, which is why this
doesn't have a full angle on the bottom there. And so this is doubled up and this piece adds
stability to this part, which would ultimately be floating. Same with right here. So just lots of extra support
to keep this lightweight but also pretty rigid once
it gets all bolted in place. Now I'm going to do the
wiring for this array. I'm gonna do as much of
it on the ground as I can, make any jumpers that I need, so that whenever we move
this all up to the roof I'm having to spend
less time on the ladder. Now I've made a video that
shows you how to crimp and make new MC4
connectors and solar wires for jumpers and extensions
in a separate video. And that's linked in the top right corner of your screen right now, as well as in the video description. Now is also the time to let you know that we have this entire array from the panels to the connectors to the wires available for sale, through shop.explorist.life. We also have the roof
rack available for sale through Unaka Gear Co. Information for both of these can be found in the video description below. The wires are secured to the
bottoms of the solar panels with zip ties so they
are nice and protected from weather and the sun even
though the wire we're using is specifically designed to
be exposed to the elements. So day two of this install. Worked half a day on it yesterday installing the cross
rails to the solar panels as well as doing all the
pre-wiring on the ground. Which I strongly recommend
getting all of this stuff cleaned up nice and tidy. Now I wanna talk about how
this array is actually wired. So kind of, as we mentioned earlier, it's a series parallel array configuration with our like panels in series strings and all those series strings in parallel. So positives and negatives of
neighboring solar panels here are wired together
creating a series string. And the positive and negative
of this series string is coming down here to our MC4 combiners on this end. For the next series string
is our 55 watt panels. Positives and negatives of
like panels wired together with the series string
positives and negatives coming over here to the
MC4 branch connector. The wire in parallel with
the previous series string. And lastly, the final 35 watt panels. Positives and negatives are wired together with the positives and
negatives of the series string coming over here and wiring
to the MC4 combiners. Each of the positive wires gets a fuse. And we'll be talking about fuse sizing as well as array efficiency
of a mixed solar array at the end of this video 'cause it's gonna get kind of math heavy and I don't have it memorized. But what we need to do now is we need to move all
this stuff up to the roof. I've already installed
the roof entry gland. And so now it's time
to get on some ladders and actually put this
stuff up on the roof. (upbeat music) Two ladders are key for putting
these panels on the roof. I handed the panels up to Eric and he handed them across to me on the other side of the van. And they simply sit in place
on top of the 80/20 side rails. Using the piece of styrofoam
from the solar panel box was really helpful for
getting the solar panels across the roof without
scratching anything. (upbeat music) Since we had to disconnect
a few select MC4 connectors to move the panels to the
roof, we had to reconnect those and put on a few additional zip ties. A few eight-inch sections of scrap 1x4 wedged into the side rails
to tilt the panels up made easy work with this. Lastly, we connected the MC4
combiners to the MC4 connectors that are connected to the
wires going through the roof. That would eventually get connected to the solar isolator
and charge controller. Connecting these wires at this
time makes the array live. So covering the other ends of these wires as well as covering the
array with cardboard to keep the voltage down is important. Or you can simply leave these connections disconnected for now until the array is
connected to the isolator. The final step is simply
securing the cross braces to the 80/20 side rails with
the cross brace hardware and T-nuts that we already
slid into the 80/20. These bolts got blue
Loctite applied to them before tightening. Now that the array is installed, let's go over the math of how this array of
mismatch panels operates. Here is how our solar panels
are arranged on the roof. We have two 200 watt panels operating at 20.4 volts and 9.8 amps. Two 55 watt panels operating
at 18.7 volts and 2.96 amps. And two 35 watt panels operating at 17.9 volts and 1.96 amps. The 200 watt panels are wired in series, and matched panels wired in series get their voltages added together while their amperages remain the same. Which gives us a 400 watt series string operating at 40.8 volts and 9.8 amps. The 55 watt panels are wired in series and match solar panels wired in series get their voltages added together while their amperages remain the same. Which gives us a 110 watt series string operating at 37.4 volts and 2.96 amps. The 35 watt panels are wired in series and match solar panels wired in series get their voltages added together while their amperages remain the same. Which gives us a 70 watt series string operating at 35.8 volts and 1.96 amps. Those three series strings
are wired in parallel with all of their positives and negatives going to 3 to 1 one MC4 combiners. Mismatch series strings of
solar panels wired in parallel get their amperages added together while their voltages operate at the lowest available
series string voltage. Which gives us an array operating at 35.8 volts and 14.72 amps. And using Watt's Law
of watts = volts x amps we can see that 35.8 volts
x 14.72 amps = 527 watts. Now since we installed
580 watts of solar panels, and are seeing a theoretical
on paper output of 527 watts, we are sitting at almost
91% array efficiency. Now the only way to get
100% array efficiency here would be to run each series string to its own charge controller. Which is absolutely doable, but is more wire than I wanted to run and more charge controllers
than I wanted to use in this system. For solar array fusing, using
the same math as before, we have an array short circuit amperage of 2.13 amps + 3.23 amps + 10.2 amps which gives us an array short
circuit current of 15.56 amps. And since our solar array
short circuit current is greater than our max series
fuse rating of our panels, or at least two out of the three sizes. We will be putting MC4 fuses
on the positive MC4 combiner protecting the positive wires
going to each series string. Now, technically we don't need a fuse on the wire going to the
200 watt series string since its max series fuse rating is greater than the array
short circuit amperage. But since the other two need fusing I didn't want this one to feel left out so it's getting one. We've got 10 amp fuses for the
55 and 35 watt series strings and a 20 amp fuse for the
200 watt series string. Now we are incredibly happy
with how this turned out and after our recent trip
1600 miles across the country to Idaho, the roof rack and solar panels were incredibly quiet and didn't appear to negatively
affect fuel mileage much at all. We are super excited to
finally have the solution to be able to put solar panels on the sides of a Maxxair
fan and air conditioner matching widths with a larger solar panel. Which up until now, hasn't really existed. Special thanks again to Rich Solar and Unaka Gear Co for believing
in the idea that we had and helping us bring it to life. Now, if you want the same roof rack and solar array set up as
us, that would be awesome. And we have all of the information to help you do just that in
the video description below. And that wraps up this video. We now have our solar panels
wired into a solar array and fastened to our roof rack. - Now, if you're not sure how we got to this point in the build, tap below to binge watch
our entire build playlist. And if you are all caught up, tap here to watch the
next video in the series where we are going to be installing floors on the inside of the camper van. See you next time. (upbeat music)
