I use the 30 amp hard wired Progressive Industries unit. Note that if you plan on using a standalone generator, you will need to make up a ground-neutral bonding plug or else the EMS will detect a floating ground and you’ll get an error code. The plug is easy to make or buy.

Really nice! The Magnum hybrid inverter is definitely on my wish list. LiFePO4 batteries are further down the list as we aren’t full time. Plus, it a 18 year old RV that is probably going to be replaced in a couple of years.

No problem. The shunt is installed on the negative side of the battery bank and all current in or out of the battery goes through it and is measured. Many times I’ll see 15 amps out of the charge controller but only 5 amps into the battery. It’s just the net…

Have a good day!

When we arrived back in Tucson near the beginning of January, everyone was complaining about the cold. It was 100°F warmer in Tucson than it was when we left Fairbanks, AK, that morning. At that time it was -45°F at the airport. So I headed for the pool...

I think that the Trimetric monitor or something similar should be the first thing installed. Then you have a real good idea of not only your consumption but the true state of your batteries based on all current in/out of the battery bank and not just relying on voltage. For voltage to be accurate, you can’t be pulling any current in or out of the battery for some finite amount of time. The Trimetric or Victron (I think that’s how it’s spelled) use shunts to measure all current. They also report voltage but the percentage is based on cumulative current measurement.

The combiner box is an outdoor j-box from Home Depot with underground cable entries (sorry, I don’t know the actual term, also from HD) glued into the box and all sealed with rtv. A hole was drilled into the bottom and another conduit fitting attached to where it goes through the roof. The bus bars were from a local solar distributor and had terminals for both the 4 AWG wires feeding down to the charge controller and the 10 AWG UV resistant wire from the panels. This was the smaller box. They had one double the height as well as some larger ones. When I add more panels, I’ll probably just add a second box adjacent to this one and run connect them together on the roof. The 4 AWG wire is adequate for the 45 amps max I planned for.

Our setup is 4x100 watt Renogy monocrystaline panels. Non-tiltable, all parallel connected. Home Depot combiner box on roof, 4 AWG wiring to Morningstar Tristan 45 amp PWM charge controller next to 4 flooded golf car batteries. Raspberry Pi3 to log data from the charge controller every 30 sec and using MRTG with RRD to collect data for display on the RV internal web server. System is sized to double the number of panels so all cables are overkill. I.e. 2/0 AWG battery and inverter cables, 2 or 4 AWG for solar charge cables, 2 AWG to the DC breakers and panel. For us, the increased efficiency of tillable panels isn’t worth the hassle of going up on the roof all the time. Easier to just add more panels. Battery monitoring with Bogart Engineering Trimetric monitor w/500 amp shunt. This system was installed on 32’ 2001 fifth wheel RV. Total cost was about $2000 including everything solar related, batteries, and 2000 watt full sine wave inverter w/auto transfer switch. Most of this was purchased through Amazon and installed in 2 days. Pretty straight forward.

There are numerous YouTube videos available including Ray’s and Eddie’s on how to set things up.

After winter boondocking in Quartzsite, I plan to add 3 or 4 more panels to compensate for the low sun angle. January max current is 15 amps. July, 24 amps at around the same latitude.

Thank you for setting this up!

Try to allow time for Capital Reef. Moab is very busy by comparison.

Initial test. I ran the batteries down a bit then plugged the PD9270 into shore power through a Kill-a-Watt meter. After manually selecting “Boost” mode, the current draw of the converter was 10.4 amps (1250 watts) and according to the Trimetric battery monitor, was pushing over 60 amps into my battery bank composed of 4xGC2 flooded batteries. After about 15 minutes, it had raised the bank from 87% to 91% and the current had dropped to 35 amps. After 25 minutes, the bank was at 93% and current was 15 amps. At this point, I unplugged the converter.

The seems to be a worthwhile addition. I still need to try it on the generator but can’t do it until next month when we are boondocking again.

My name is Richard and my wife, Bridget, and I are traveling with two medium sized dogs. Not full time. Maybe ~half time. We still have our home in Fairbanks, AK, and go back and forth quite a few times but prefer to be there during the summer. I think I've mad the trip down or up to Alaska 32 times though only twice with our 32' 2001 Cedar Creek fifth wheel pulled with our 2005 RAM 3500. But have traveled in practically every other type of vehicle/RV. Favorite mode so far is motorcycle w/sidecar.

We aren't as clean and shiny as Ray's rig.

We'll see how it works. I have the Champion 2000 watt units as well. But I've never had a problem running things as long as I didn't switch to eco mode right after starting or switching on a heavy load. Since I can't run a generator here at the RV park, I did run it off of the inverter so I could read the power draw of the converter and it was right around 11 amps AC for a short time then dropped. I'll post back next month when we'll be boondocking again. Tomorrow, I was going to run the batteries down to about 60% then see how it works. I'll put my Kill-a-watt meter on the converter.