Solar Install: Part 2 - Mounting the Lower Sliding Rails & Combiner Box
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- Опубликовано: 16 окт 2024
- For this part of the project, the most important thing was being sure the L-brackets were perfectly parallel to each other and perfectly perpendicular to the Superstrut. If not, when they slide out, they will twist and bind. Before we could move on to actually putting panels up on the rack, we had to mount and wire the combiner box.
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About Us:
A family of six dreaming, planning, and preparing to full-time RV around the country. Renovating our '64 GM PD4106.
VHB and Eternobond are two amazing products. I’ve seen them used extensively on bus builds. With all these numbers going through your heads it’s amazing that you ever get any sleep.
We have been very pleased with both products and with 3M 5200! It's funny that you mention the sleep - this has been one of the roughest weeks for sleep in a LONG time - I am somewhat of an insomniac anyway - but this last two weeks has been especially taxing.
It's been a long journey from watching the battery build to Solar Panel Instalation, I've loved ever video. Thanks again for sharing this build with us.
Thank you Karl! Thanks for joining us on this crazy build
It looks to be a high quality installation. Exciting indeed!
Thank you Mark!
Thats exciting to get started with the electrics for the solar panels. Won't be long until you can start doing the inside :)
Thank you Jerry - We are so excited to start doing the "living" part of the bus.
Nice find on that combiner box, you couldn't have built your own for what you paid for it. I can't wait to see this system up and running and see what kind of performance you get from it. It should run everything you can put in the bus.
You guys work super well together! My wife and I can almost never work on anything together!
Thank you j jones - It does take some practice :). Michelle and I have been together since we were 15 years old, this is the first big project like this that we have taken on. It helps that we don't really know what we are doing and we are just trying to figure things out :)
I am listening to birds in your vid and looking at snow in my yard with the temps around 18deg. wishing I was where I could listen to the birds in person.
Cold is a real pain, the summers up here are to die for, GREEN grass, blue skies, temperate temperatures. Winters!!!! ruclips.net/video/M4anW4PLaLk/видео.html
All that snow ... makes my bones hurt ;). Hopefully, we can make it out your way in the summer.
Getting SOOOO close for the panels to be put on...can't wait! :)
Don't forget to put a water tight plug in the unused output gland.
Thank you Gregory - we will get it all sealed up.
Having a little combiner box envy...
Thanks Greg - for the money it is a pretty decent box
Looking good guys that is a good looking box great choice and one I'll be looking at for sure thanks for great detail on how your putting it together I'm always impressed on your attention to detail thank you for that I've built coaches in the past but have never installed solar and I'm going to on our current coach so you've helped me make some informative decisions in my approach to building my system so thank you so much for your valuable input can't wait to see it all hooked up its looking so cool.
All your hard work is paying off
And I'm super excited for you the project is turning out beautiful.
Thank you Brian - we are so excited to flip the switch on this thing and actually see the sun putting power into our batteries! Thanks for joining us on this journey.
Always great information - thanks for sharing.
Thank you!
The wires being a little over sized is a good thing. It means less resistance, less heat and room for an extra panel or two if you ever want to add more.
I wonder if these kindorfs Uni strut are not rusted right now because they are not rated for outside.
You idea is fantastic.
The UniStrut we installed was Hot Dip Galvanized (we also sealed where we cut it). It has been over a year on the roof and we don't see any signs of rust. That being said - it is carbon steel and eventually it will probably rust. When it does it will probably be time to put a new solar rack on anyway :). We will report back on how it does but so far so good.
Looking good !!!!!
Thank you Lorenzo - it is coming along!
G'day Guy's, great job so far I am loving this project. I have a similar setup on my house boat in Australia. 8 X 320w PV panels. 4 X 2 panel series strings, each wired to its own victron smartsolar mppt 100/20 controller. Using the 4 solar controllers makes for very efficient use of the PV panels. This way I also have redundency, and allowing for shading probs. I am using a victron 24/5000/120 inverter, also have an auto start on my Honda EU3000 generator. I have 1320 AH of AGM batteries. I am using a $30.00 raspberry pi in place of the $700.00 victron color control, this works great.
Thank you David - that sounds like a great setup!
Looks like a excellent installation, wondering if you have any concerns with the small box that connects through the Bus, seems that with the wire through holes facing forward if you will get water penetration at 50 to 60 MPH??
Thank you John - I was concerned about that but we have had quite a few heavy rainy days without the wires in and no rain got in. If it becomes a problem the contingency plan is to add a small air damn in front of it - hopefully we won't need it - but we will test it for sure. Thank you for the feedback
I have 4 panels on my roof using this combiner box, (2-425w and 2-200w).When I was using just 2 of the 424w I was getting over 800 watts on a sunny day. Now when I added the 2-200 watt panels, I get under 300 watts total.
Thank you Eladio. For panels that different you are going to want them on separate charge controllers and not run them through the same combiner box. If you are combining different panels like this you need to match the voltages as closely as you can (like maybe by combining the 2-200W panels in series before bringing them into the combiner box). Here is an article that describes what happens when you combine different panels and what to consider: solarpanelsvenue.com/mixing-solar-panels/
Thanks. I'm using 2 Ecoflow Delta Pros and a smart battery.
Great explanation, Beautiful execution! I was just wondering how lightning protection works in a bus, don’t you need a grounding wire for that, running into the ground? Thank you for making these videos!
Thank you Freddy. When the bus is plugged in the grounds will travel through the 50A shore power chord into the earth. However when the bus is moving ... I guess we could drag some chains or drive a copper stake into the ground? (we are not going to do either of these things - I am just thinking out loud). Maybe it will only be protected when we are plugged in? Let's just hope and pray we don't get hit with lightening :)
I really love your work man...keep it up... by the way when you plan to work on your tummy... hope fully soon..!!
soon my friend ... soon
8:15 That's a Surge Protective Device (SPD) and a Miniature Circuit Breaker (MCB).
I am building a 2s2P setup on my box truck as well. One series will be on sliders like yours when driving. If I use a combiner box as well, won’t the amps drop significantly when the panels are shaded? Reducing the overall Watts produced. I am trying to decide between a combiner box fed into an all on one charge controller verses using two all in one charge controllers (1 for each string). Would appreciate your real world experience with this.
Amps drop in half as you would expect when the lower panels are in because only 1/2 of the panels are exposed to the sun. The secret is to have the panels that can be shaded in parallel with the ones that will not be shaded. I have run this setup for over 4 years and it works exactly like it's supposed to. Going with two charge controllers is slightly better because it gives you some redundancy.
If you had more solar charge controllers, wouldn't that help with if some panels were shaded?
Thanks, Jerry, small charge controllers might help with shading but probably not by much. We already have 4 parallel strings (which helps with the shading). It would add significantly to the cost and complexity of the system.
Nice
Very nice
Thank you Jeff - she is getting there
Well I wrote this once and lost it, Your solar discussion when over my head. Not knowing anything, would putting the four panels on top (two in parallel and then those in series as you discussed) keep those panels in full sun (no shading). The four panels under the top ones would be no functional when traveling?
I love welding cable, I use it for battery and jumper cables all the time. They are fine strand, very flexible, with stands oil and being dragged across the floor. (my understanding is electricity does not flow through wires, but across the surface, that meaning the fine strand has more carrying capacity?
You said you usually use welding cable, have you wired panels before?
Cover the whole length of the wire to keep the wind from rubbing it around on the roof when traveling?
Thanks for my "beginning from this Morning" fix! Glenn
The solar stuff can be a bit confusing. Very much like batteries - you can connect them in series to get higher voltages or in parallel to get more current. The added caveat is that if you do series shading matters a lot. So the way we have them configured even with the bottom panels pulled in we will still get 1740 Watts (in theory) to charge the battery with. If we did them all in parallel we could have also seen the same benefit but we would have had to run much thicker cable (50A vs 25A). We thought this would be a good compromise - time will tell if this was a good choice.
We use welding cable for everything else in the electric bay from 2 AWG to 2/0 AWG stuff. The super fine strands make it very very easy to work with.
I have not wired panels before I was speaking about the stuff we have in the electrical bay.
Thanks for following along Glenn - I am enjoying your channel as well
Juan
I beleave that AC uses the skin effect but DC uses the whole wire
That would be interesting to know, makes sense as most automotive primarey wire has thick heavy strands
Thanks for mentioning my channel, I hope some people take a look. Hope to get back to dragster stuff soon. Need to build a banister for the basement stairs next. Loading a new video as I type here.
Any thoughts on the grounding safety wire? Was noticing you decided not to use it. I have this same box and am wondering if that just goes to chassis ground or if it's even necessary or useful in a vehicle?
We actually did ground the safety wire to the chassis - I did not show it because there is plenty of controversy surrounding the proper grounding of a PV array on a vehicle. My thought was if we are plugged in - the chassis is bonded to the grounding lug on the 50 amp cable ... but I agree with you that on a vehicle it is mostly useless.
I know that with lithium battery wiring I've heard that you're supposed to parallel them first, before you series wire them. so if you have 8 panels, you would take 2 panels and parallel them together, and do the same thing to the rest. you would have 4 sets and each would be paralleled. than you take those and series them together. Here you are doing it backwards. I know with batteries that what you're supposed to do, not sure if it's the same for solar panels. Also with the bottom panels being shaded, I thought about adding a breaker switch when the panels are not slid out. I'm planning on doing the same thing as you guys with the sliding panel thing
Thank you eksine. With the batteries you can do it either way but if you connect them in series first then you need a BMS for every "pack" you tie in parallel (I hope that makes sense). I don't think a breaker for the bottom panels is necessary, because they are in parallel they just won't make any power. When our solar panels are tucked in we make 1740 Watts instead of 3480W.
@@BeginningfromthisMorning so if you series the panels first before paralleling them it requires half as much BMS devices? I don't understand
@@eksine The battery will require a BMS for each "in-series" strings. When you parallel the cells - those cells act like one huge cell.
So do you run all your solar panels in to that box and then you only have 2 or 3 cables running into the bus?
Yes that is correct Mike - they are all hooked up to the combiner box and then just 2 cables come into the bus.
I’m surprised that your neighbors don’t complain about the bus being parked in your driveway. I know my neighbors would. That being said you’re doing a great build
We have amazing neighbors! We even put them to work! Two houses down we have a master electrician who owns his own company and right next door we have a certified HVAC technician! Both of them have done work on our bus :). Part one of the solar install video you can see them stop by and visit with us. Technically we are in an HOA zoned neighborhood so we shouldn't be working on the bus but they are all very gracious.
Beginning from this Morning that’s what I call a great place to live!
@@Riker-eq2yv 100% - we are very grateful.
Nice 👌 work i like you bor
estan buenos tus videos nose porque nolos ases en spanol
Muchas gracias. hacemos los vidoes en Ingles porque no hablo bastante español especialmente en coses technicas.
What brand and model is your combiner box?
amzn.to/3onHcvV. Here is the exact one we used.
Thanks. Out of stock. Sounds like the seller owes you credit. Good looking box. Nice water seal and plenty of room to work with.
Yeah harder to find a wire stripper for less than 10ga. nice crimper though.
sometime doing electricity thing can be a good math exercice!
Yes it can!
You make my brain hurt!
Sorry about that Mike - I want to give enough details to try to help anybody trying to build a similar system - I know the technical details can be quite boring.
I'm just saying that sounds like a lot of work. Great info and job. But I think I understood what you were saying!