solar help,please!

[leefamfun]

We have an 07 Fleetwood Arcadia.We want to go Solar.What are all the componants we need,and how do we do this?

[dthurk]

Big question here.  There are others here with more knowledge than I but...you'll need
 
 solar panel(s).  
larger battery bank (most likely)
 Controller
 Wiring
 A mount for the panel(s).
 
 I installed 160 watts of solar on the roof of our travel trailer.  It's meet our electrical needs up to this point for a fair amount of dry camping, up to 7 consecutive days.   The system is set up so that we can add more panels  (up to 400 watts total) in the future.
 
 You'll need to do a workup of your electrical needs to be able to figure out how large a solar panel or panels to use.  Will you use your system free standing or mounted on the camper?  Regardless, you'll need some kind of mount for the panel(s).  I consider a controller to be required.  You can operate without one (Wavery will recommend this), but you have to be on hand to manually connect and disconnect the system.  Something's got to control the system.  It's either you or a controller.  We want a hands off system, thus the controller.  You should have a fairly large battery bank.  We use 2 6 volt batteries connected in series.  You may not need that large a bank but probably should have something pretty hefty.  Wiring is a crucial element, don't skimp here.  There are companies online that will sell complete solar wiring kits.  We bought our controller and wiring from http://www.amsolar.com/
 
 I'm sure others will chime in soon.

[wavery]

You can make it easy and relatively cheap or complicated and relatively expensive.

Everything hinges on your demand and the amount of sun that you get while camping. It's all simple math.

I would recommend starting with a good quality 80W solar panel. Wire it straight to your batteries (It's best to have 2 batteries minimum). No need for a controller with an 80w panel IMO. It's just like having a 6amp (unregulated) battery charger that may put out 6 amps (max) or less per hour for part of a sunny day. Not a lot of chance of over-charging while camping.

You can just run 10-12G marine grade wire with clamps on the ends to clamp on to the batteries. It doesn't have to be rocket science. Place the panel in direct sun and your charging.

If you find that you need more charging capacity, you can purchase another panel. At this stage, 2, 80w panels can put out 12Amps at full sun and it would be a good idea to check the battery voltage a few times during the day. If the voltage gets up to 14v, just unplug the panels for a while. If you feel uncomfortable with controlling the voltage on your own, you may want to invest in a controller at that stage.

My guess is, you won't need a controller until you get up to 3, 80w panels. If you find that 1 panel is not keeping up with demand, 2 panels will probably only need to be checked a couple times a day. With the price of these controllers, it seems a waist of $ to me.

I had 4, 80w panels on my yacht for many years. I never used a controller. I had a multi-meter attached to the batteries and looked at it once in a while. If the charge got too high, I just removed one clamp. However, I must state that I had 4, 8D gel cell batteries which gave me 800amps of storage. That makes a big difference. If you only have 100amps of storage from 2 6v golf cart batteries or 2, 12v deep cycle batteries, more attention will be required to keep the batteries from over charging if you have a large system.

dthurk has a great, care-free system. As long as there is some sun, he'll get some charge with no concern of over-charging if he leaves the camper for a whole day.

I think that the ultimate system for camping would be 4- 80W panels, 4- 6v golf cart batteries with a good quality controller and an inverter so that you can run your 110v appliances whenever you wish. That would be a fairly expensive system but you could leave the generator at home during the summer.

[BirdMan]

Jack, first you have to figure out what total load (Amp Hours) you use in an average day/night of camping.  DON'T TRY TO GUESS ABOUT THIS INFORMATION, as this is probably the most important part to start of your solution.

Think of your battery as a vessel or container that can hold water.  Water is your Amps.  Your Solar System is your faucet to refill the container each day.  If you drink more water in a day then your faucet can supply into your vessel in a day then eventually you run out of water.  

Since you have a new pop-up go your manuals and figure out how many Amps each load draws.  You may not have manuals for everything in which case you have to find the Mfg labels on each device/unit to get this information.  When you see an Amp rating on something it really means Amp Hours (Ah) or how many Amps that load will use in one hour.

The basic loads you probably have are things like: Water Pump, Heater, and Lights.  You may also want to run a DC/AC converter to operate things like a TV and the list goes on.  One would assume you will be running your refrigerator off propane.

Once you have these numbers for each load you have to think about how much you use each load.  For instance you may have a furnace fan that draws 3.5A.  How many hours per night do you think this fan will run?  This could vary a large amount depending on how warm you need to have the pop-up & how cold the outside temperature is.  Lets say, worst case it will run 15min. per hour and you will have the furnace on from 10pm-6am.  If I did my math right then you will be running the furnace fan for 120min or 2hours.  You multiply 3.5A/h by 2hr and the total draw for that fan is 7A per night.

Do this math for every load you plan to use.  Once you have a total Amp load per 24hr day then use some kind of multiplier to ensure if you go over some days (or for cloudy days) that your solar system can handle it.  I used a multiplier of 1.25 of my total Amps to ensure my Solar solution could keep up.  

Once you get this total number then you can start looking at a solar solution.  Let's say your total actual Amp draw per day ends up being 38Amps.  Multiply this by your insurance factor (1.25) and we come up with 47.5Amps.  

You Solar solution needs to be able to provide 47.5Amps per day back into your battery(s).  Now is when you can start looking at solar panels, controllers, mounting solutions, ...

I noticed you are in Utah, so like here in CO we don't have a shortage of sunshine.  If you plan to camp often in mostly cloudy/overcast states/places you may want to up your insurance factor to something like 1.5.

[JimS]

Good advice above.  Once you decide on how much panel and battery you need, ( its probably safer to over build) check out the internet to find the best deal on the components.  As for wire. go with the largest gauge you can.  I got my panel wire from Fry's; it is 10G O2 free speaker wire ( fine strands and low resistance) and the rest of the system is 6G welding cable, again, low resistance and both are very flexible.  On the connections, make sure they are clean, use a dielectric grease, crimp AND solder, then cover with shrink tude to make them water proof.  Keep runs as short as possible.
Ther are many choices for batteries, the best bang for the buck is wet cells such as the Trojan T-105.  I have two in series for 12V and it gives me 3 to 4 times the capacity of the old GRP 27 I had before.  AGM's are less maintenance but cost 2-3X that of flooded batteries.  I would stay away from gells as they are ratehr fussy with how you can charge them.
Make the panel portable.  You will want to be able to follow the sun.  Brackets are easy to build or fairly cheap to buy.  I built mine in one evening and they work great.  You will need a plug to attach the panel to the camper if you decide to go with a controller.  Ther are several styles available.  I used a Marinco trolling motor plug and socket (Bass Pro Shop) that is a 3 prong, water proof twist - lock affair that is mounted on the side of the camper.  Also. make sure the current wiring is in good shape and the grounds are solid!  You will be supprised at the sloppy wiring in new PU's and the problems it can cause.
As for a controller.  For smaller panels you can go without one.  For 130 watt panel, I decided to use one for the panel puts out about 21V at 7.3A.  The controller I chose was the Blue Sky SB2000E.  It uses PWM and is MPPT capable.  MPPT "converts" excess voltage into more current for increased charging capacity.  My SB2000E can receive 6.5A from the panel and put out 7.5A to the battery.
There are many websites that have good information on this and a quick Google will find you more information than you can read!  Anyway, the hardest part is deciding what you need and figuring out how to set the system up.  Once done, it is nice to be able to go out and not worry about using the electricity!
See the post by myself and BirdMan in the Dry Camping section.  Also. there is another post further down in the Dry Camping section on my first writeup on my system.
Good luck with your new project!
Here is a link to help figure out how much battery / solar panel you need: http://trucks.pcwize.com/dc_configurator.php
Jim