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 contacted me.  We had met the year prior while camping out at the coast.  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 bells and whistles.  We set an installation date and the customers brought the trailer to me for the work to be completed.  The customers wanted to stay in their trailer while the installation work was done so they could have a better idea of how all the components were installed and how they worked, which I was happy to accommodate.

The installation took three days to complete.  I installed a Multiplus II 3kva 2×120 UL rated inverter charger to provide power to the RV.  There was an existing Magnum 2812 inverter charger in the RV with a BMK battery monitor, MEARC display and AGS.  All of this equipment was removed and replaced with corresponding Victron equipment.  I added a SmartSolar MPPT 150/100 solar charge controller and installed eight 200 watt Newpowa Pro series solar panels.  I added two Battle Born GC3 270 amp hour lithium batteries to power the system.  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.  I also add three Ruuvi Bluetooth temperature sensors and integrated them 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.

During the installation, I spent some time with the owners 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 sent them an invitation to join the VRM portal for their system so they could easily add it to their free VRM account.  We also set up a VRM widget on the owner’s phone to monitor the system.