Comment by bdickason

7 years ago

Great idea to show viability of solar setups! I’ve installed a simple solar panel / charge controller / battery solution in a van and was surprised how simple it is to get up and running. The tech is really reliable and is super affordable.

8 comments

bdickason

Reply
theNJR  7 years ago

Mind sharing a few details?

  • aaronax  7 years ago

    I'll share details of what I installed a few months ago in my 37 foot sailboat. It will be more of a counterpoint to "how simple it is to get up and running." But it enables a great many luxuries in our live-aboard lifestyle.

    -4x 100 Ah LiFePo4 batteries (BattleBorn brand)

    -3000 watt charger/inverter unit (Victron MultiPlus)

    -3x 360 watt solar panels (LG Neon R)

    -Solar charge controller (Victon SmartSolar)

    -System controller (Victron ColorControl GX)

    -Battery monitor (Victron BMV)

    -A lot of heavy wiring, ranging from 4 gauge to 4/0 gauge. Some segments are designed to handle 400 amps (12V DC, if my system was any larger I would have gone with a 24V or 48V design to keep wire sizes reasonable). Of course it has to be stranded and tinned wire for a marine environment, so think along the lines of $5/foot.

    -An assortment of bus bars and circuit breakers. 100A breaker for each battery, 400A fuse for the main connection, $120 bus bars, etc.

    It was a very interesting project for me personally and really a lot of fun, but solar can easily become a serious project as your scale beyond maybe 500 watt-hours per day. I haven't done a final cost summation of my project but I'm sure it was over $10,000.

    • frosted-flakes  7 years ago

      I've heard good stuff about Victron products, especially for boats. Is there a particular reason you chose it?

      Also, do you have a diesel or gas engine as well? I know larger sailboats generally do; not sure about 37'. Presumably, solar and batteries would not be sufficient to replace that with an electric motor, unless you only used it sporadically. I can't imagine wanting to get stuck for days when it's both cloudy and not windy.

      3 replies →

    • driverdan  7 years ago

      I have nearly an identical setup in my bus home, with 300Ah of CALB LiFePO4 batteries (half the price of BattleBorn) and 1800W of solar.

      The solar is the easy part. It's everything else that makes it complicated.