Solar panel on 2021 Artic Wolf

[Balderman72]

Has anyone upgraded their solar panel on their 5th wheel. Ours came with a 50watt panel. We do a lot of Boondocking and I have upgraded the batteries to (2)200ah Lithium batteries. But I want to upgrade the solar panels so we don’t have to run the generator at all. The solar panel says the brand is Waaree. Looking for at least 200 watts.

 

[SeaDog-FRF]

There are numerous articles about upgrading solar if you use the search function at the top of the page. good luck

 

[SantaFe big sky]

Arctic Wolf Solar

I have a 23 RDL Arctic Wolf. It came with a 10 amp PWM charge controller and a 50 watt panel. This is really only adequate to trickle charge your battery while in storage. The 10 amp charge controller can only handle about 120 watts of solar.

If you have a total electric refrigerator 12v (not Propane) then your fridge can pull 55 amp hours a day. 200 watts won’t be enough. At best 200:watts of panels is more likely to give you less that 50 amp hours even during cloudless summer days.

Your 200 amp hours of Lithium batteries gives you 160 usable amp hours (never discharge them below 20%). That should be enough for 2 days usage. Ideally you want enough panels to fully charge your system by mid day. This way the solar powers everything for one quarter of the day and your batteries provide power for three quarters of the day.

I suggest you think about either 400 watts of panels on the roof and a 200 watt portable suitcase or put 600 watts on the roof. This should give you a pretty decent amount of charge and avoid running the generator except when you have more than a single cloudy day or in the shortest winter days. In winter your heater fan will draw a fair amount of current.

You could start out with 200 watt solar suitcase and see how that goes since you wouldn’t have to pull any wires or drill any holes. Just connect the leads for the charge controller to your battery bank and charge away.

Portable solar has one plus, you can reposition it during the day and get more power than a rooftop panel of the same wattage. The big negative is its portable and unless you are someone who never leaves the campsite security and theft is an issue.

I ripped out the wimpy charge controller and 50 watt panel and added 4 Renogy 100 watt panels on the roof running into a Combiner box, then a double throw breaker leading into a Victron 100/50 MPPT charge controller. Then I built a 200 watt suitcase that can be plugged in in front of the double throw breaker.

Unfortunately, we bought our trailer last fall at the end of the season and haven’t been able to real world our experience. Next month is our first outing and looking forward to testing it all out.

Check out the solar forum on. fR Forums and also take a look at the website mobile-solarpower.com

 

[PFeezzy]

Has anyone upgraded their solar panel on their 5th wheel. Ours came with a 50watt panel. We do a lot of Boondocking and I have upgraded the batteries to (2)200ah Lithium batteries. But I want to upgrade the solar panels so we don’t have to run the generator at all. The solar panel says the brand is Waaree. Looking for at least 200 watts.

Just an FYI, they Waaree manual says it’s not compatible with lithium batteries. You may want to swap out the solar charge controller. Side note, you also want to configure or swap out your converter so you can get a full charge to your batteries.