This installation was completed in July of 2026.  This was a unique installation proposed by the customer.  The customer contacted me regarding adding off grid capabilities to his travel trailer.  The trailer came with OEM installed solar panels and lead acid batteries for the 12 volt systems.  The OEM batteries were not up to the task of powering the onboard 12 volt refrigerator though (even with the solar), so the customer upgraded the batteries to lithium.  There was no inverter in the trailer to power the 120 volt system, but the customer had a Pecron E3600LFP Power Station he was using to plug the trailer into to provide 120 volt power when needed.  The customer wanted to somehow integrate the power station into the trailer’s power system to make it easier to use.  In other words, the customer did not want to have to set up the power station and plug the trailer into it everytime he wanted to use 120 volt power when boondocking.  The customer, also wanted to keep the power station available for use elsewhere when needed.  This meant the power station needed to be easily removable from the integration.  We discussed options and came up with a plan.  The customer then brought the trailer to me for the installation.

There was space under the bed to install the power station and an auxiliary 48 volt battery the customer had to augment the storage capacity of the power station.  I decided to add an automatic transfer switch to allow for easy integration of the power station’s 120 volt output into the trailer’s 120 volt system.  I was able to install the transfer switch in a cavity behind the OEM electric fireplace.  This was a convenient location because it was where the OEM shore cord power entered the trailer.  I removed the shore cord wiring and connected that wire to the output of the transfer switch to feed the main breaker in the breaker panel.  I then added new wire from the shore cord input to one input of the transfer switch.  I also ran new wire from under the bed where the power station was going to be mounted to the other input of the transfer switch.  I added a simple 30 amp male cord end to this wire to allow it to easily plug into the 30 amp AC output of the power station. 

I then mounted the Auxilary 48 volt power station battery the customer provided under the bed and wired it to the auxiliary battery input of the power station with wires and ports the customer provided (he had been using this set up already in his standlone system).  The customer also had an AC powered 48 volt battery charger that he wanted to use to charge the auxiliary battery and power station battery when needed.  I wired this charger to a NOCO AC Port Plug.  I mounted the NOCO in the A-Frame area of the trailer.  The customer had a bed mounted inverted power plug in his tow vehicle and he wanted to be able to run an extension cord from that plug to the stand alone battery charger to charge the power station batteries while driving.  The NOCO plug made this easy to accomplish.

Finally, I re-wired the OEM solar panels.  I removed the solar panel wiring from the OEM 12 volt solar controller and extended this wiring to allow it to plug directly into the Pecron Power Station.  The power station had a built in MPPT solar controller with a port for solar panel input.  In order to properly charge the 48 volt power station, I also had to re-wire the solar panels themselves on the roof of the trailer.  They were originally wired in parallel for the 12 volt system.  I wired them in series to increase the voltage to properly charge the new 48 volt power station batteries.  I added a solar breaker between the panels and the power station for additional safety and to allow for easy extension of the solar panel wiring to reach the power station.

Once everything was completed, the trailer could easily be powered from either shore power or the power station via the automatic transfer switch.  The 12 volt batteries stay charged when the power station (or shore power) is active through the OEM 12 volt converter.  The power station batteries get charged from either solar power or the stand alone 48 volt battery charger.  The Pecron Power station can easily be removed for use elsewhere by simply unpluging the 30 amp male AC cord end, the solar input connector and the auxiliary battery connector.  These are all simple plug in connectors.