This installation was completed in May of 2024.  The owners of this 5th wheel planned to take it to Rolling Retreats in Elk City, Oklahoma to have a Flex Armor roof installed.  They wanted to have solar panels installed before the roof was done, so they began looking for an installer.  They initially contacted Neal Pope from Nomad Neal to discuss having him do the work.  When Neal (who I trained to do solar installations) discovered the customer lived about a half hour away from me, he referred them to me.  I spoke with the customers about what they were trying to accomplish.  I presented several options to them to meet their needs.  After some discussion back and forth, we settled on an installation with all the basic equipment and the ability to add capacity in the future.  We set an installation date and the customers brought the trailer to me for the work to be completed.

The installation took three days to complete.  I installed a Multiplus II 3kva 2×120 UL inverter charger to provide power to the RV.  There was an existing Magnum CSW1012 inverter powering the residential refrigerator circuit.  I left this in place to optionally power the refrigerator while traveling or when trying to conserve energy.  I added a SmartSolar MPPT 150/100 solar charge controller.  I installed four 200 watt Newpowa Pro series solar panels and set the system up so the customers could add four additional panels in the future.  I marked the layout of the four future panels on the roof so when the Flex Armor roof was applied, they could add the appropriate mounts.  I added two Li Time 230 amp hour lithium batteries to power the system.  The customers were working on a budget and just weren’t ready to spend the additional money on Battle Born batteries.  They purchased the Li Time batteries (based on conversations we had) and provided them to me for installation.  I finished off the system with a Cerbo-S GX and GX Touch 70 display.  I also added two Mopeka Pro Check LPG tank sensors to the on board propane tanks and integrated these sensors into the Cerbo.  Because the RV had an onboard Onan 5500 watt LPG generator, I added an Atkinson Electronics GSCM-mini to allow the Cerbo to automatically start/stop the generator.  As part of this installation, I combined the generator L1 and L2 outputs by adding a 6 AWG jumper wire between them to allow its full power to pass through on either leg.  This is a specific issue to the Multiplus II 2×120.  When it senses the incoming power on L1 and L2 are the same phase, it ignores the L2 input and only passes through the L1 input.  The Onan 5500 generator has an L1 and L2 output, but they are in the same phase.  Thus only the L1 output will pass through the Multiplus without this modification.  By adding a jumper wire between the generator’s L1 and L2 outputs, the full generator output power can pass over either leg.  This allows the MP to pass all of the generator’s potential power through on L1.

Once I was done with the installation, the owners returned to pick up their rig.  I spent some time with them going over all the equipment and the Victron Connect App to interact with the equipment.  I also went over the VRM portal and how that monitored and controlled the system.  I had sent them an invitation to join the VRM portal for their system before they arrived.  We also set up a VRM widget on the owner’s phone to monitor the system.