Van Solar Panel Setup

The first thing we did was mount our solar panels to our van s roof and wire them together in parallel using a signstek y branch wiring connector.

Van solar panel setup. Our support panel is a 100w panel from giosolar panel you can find this on amazon. The first thing you need to do is attach the z brackets to the solar panels so that you can securely attach them to the roof. Inline 30a mc4 fuse you can find this on no products found. The panels themselves are easy to install and the entire guide to installing solar panels can be found on renogy s website.

I was lucky to inherit two 100w solar panels with the van they just need to be wired in. Without solar panels your van s system will be useless. Isolator switch you can find this on. This is all you need for your basic solar panel installation.

I used an external waterproof junction box mounted on the roof of the to take the panel cables into the van via compression glands and then into the mppt solar controller charger mppt30 solar charger bad choice in hindsight see last section of this post. However a parallel setup has a different set of issues. What van conversion solar equipment do we use. More current which requires thicker wires or smaller wire gauge size and larger current for mppt controller to handle.

For parallel wiring all the positive wires go together and all the negative wires go together. Do not hook up your solar panels to the charge controller until the batteries are connected. Our main 335w panel is an lg panel. Outside van estimated that in ideal sunny conditions my solar panels can pull up to 30 amps per hour.

Controllers epever 30a charge controller. In two months we haven t had to plug in a single time and i haven t seen my battery voltage drop below 12 4 which is about 75 full. Van solar panels came in a variety of wattages but most vanlifers use multiple 100w panels for their systems. Solar generators before closing out we d like to give a quick mention to solar generators.

The kit comes with 4 brackets for each panel and all you need to do is use the screw nut bolt for each one and attach them. For a parallel setup this is not the case. If any panel is partly blocked the efficiency of the solar setup drops to the level of the least efficient panel in the setup.