Last Fall a buddy of mine decided to pimp out his trailer with some DIY solar. Norm’s little trailer was the perfect little get away trailer for those week warrior trips, the only thing it was missing was a little self sufficient power. After a little research into norms needs and requirements we decided to overkill the system and use 200 watts of solar panel to charge his deep cycle battery.
To attach the panels we fixated 2 aluminum strips to the roof of the trailer with a hefty strip of PL400 and a few self tapping screws to seal to ensure a determinant bond.
In order to mount the panels to the aluminim strip we used self tapping scrws to attach some Z brackets to the back of the panels then screwed them into the roof.
With the panels attached to the roof it was time to run the wires. We neatly zapstrapped the wires together under the pannel and take up the slack and fished them through the vent above the rear fridge access than into the trailer. This compartment gave us plenty of grommets and access to get the wire into the main trailer. The battery, charge controller and inverter were all installed in the kitchen cabinet.
Now one of the best ways to maximize your solar system is to consume less energy. The next step in our solar camper trailer was to swap out those power hungry light bulbs for low voltage LEDs. We wired in 12V LEDs into all of the existing light locations.. Now wait 12V leds on 120v wire? Why yes we did.. rather than running new lines we disconnected the 120V lines in the braker box and spliced them into a new line we ran from the battery. This allowed use to re-use the original wires in our new system.
For power storage we went with a Nautilus ultra AGM deep cycle battery. For 120V power we used a Eliminator 1000W inverter (since it was on sale!) We wired the a power wire from the electrical box to the inverter with a plug on one end. This allowed us to plug in the electrical box and run the built-in in trailer plugs off solar and utilize the factory setup.
With a few hours of work we ended up with one happy Norm ready to get out and enjoy the outdoors!
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