That's the sweetness right there. As soon as I saw it, I said to myself, "Great minds think alike" as my rooftop solar array looks a lot like this one. That's a high dollar, professionally designed and built system though. We're old, retired FTers who designed and built our system ourselves, on a tight budget. It took us 5 years to gather the resources to complete it, doing all the work ourselves. We started by building a 620-watt liftable solar array on the side of our motorhome. It makes a nice bedroom window awning too, practically lifting itself with a couple gas struts, and it's easy to clean, standing safely on the ground. Next, we built a 12v, 560ah LiFePo-4 battery with 8, 280ah prismatic cells. We use a Heltec 330amp BMS with a 5a active balancer. It cost us less than $1,500 to build this 7.1 kwh battery, including the high amp BMS. We chose these cells rather than a pre-built battery because they fit perfectly under the steps of our MH where our old pair of golf cart batteries used to reside. We insulated the battery compartment, cut a small hole in our step risers and installed a tiny computer CPU fan to keep this space at close to room temperature, so we don't have to worry about the BMS shutting down charging due to low temperature - or their life reduced from getting too hot. Our 12v system uses an 80A Progressive Dynamics LFP converter/charger, a 1,000w Renogy inverter, a 50a Epever MPPT charge controller and a Lnex battery monitor. By mounting the solar array on the side of our coach, we left the roof free to rack 8, 550w solar panels (4,400 watts) down the length of our 35ft Class A, 15" off our roof, above our AC, vents, etc. It looks a lot like this CCRV rack. We built the rack our of 2" aluminum angle with the front 2 panels of ours sloping down at a shallower 9.5-degrees to meet the roof, gently easing airflow over the array. It covers our entire roof too, providing some nice shade with plenty of cooling air underneath, increasing solar output and reducing the heat load on the air conditioners too, though our overall height is still just under 12 ft. We mounted our Sungold Power all-in-one 48V, 5,000W Inverter/100A charge controller/battery charger, breakers and a Lnex battery monitor on the wall in our bedroom, saving us space as well as money. The 48v battery that resides under our bed uses 16, 320ah prismatic cells and a 200amp Heltec BMS to keep it safe. Together with our 560ah 12v bank, we have a total of 23.5 kwh of batteries onboard - kept charged by 5,020 watts of solar. We added about 500 lbs. to our roof and about 800 lbs. overall, as we removed about 300lbs from our MH to make room for extra weight. Ours is a little smaller than this CCRV system, but it's sized for our needs in a smaller RV. For instance, our MH came from the factory with 2, 13.5k btu rooftop A/Cs. We removed the rooftop A/C we had in the bedroom and replaced it with an EG4 28.5 seer-2, 12k btu mini-split heat pump on the upper rear of our motorhome. It's super quiet and cools as well as our 14.5k btu soft start equipped Furrion we installed up front. This second phase provides 24/7 off-grid air conditioning and heat from the heat pump. We can run both A/Cs and charge our batteries from solar at the same time, even in winter. We have a total of 6,000 watts of 120v inverted ac power, giving us off-grid electrical self-sufficiency for a total budget of around $11,500, (including the high-efficiency heat pump.) This fit our budget and is only a fraction of what a similarly sized, professionally designed and built system would be. This allows us to keep our aging 5,500w generator in reserve, for back-up use only. Take care, we hope to see you down the road one day.
Thank you for watching our video and supporting our channel. We greatly appreciate you taking the time to check our little piece of the world. He used 550 Watt Bifacial panels. He gets a massive amount of power off of the roof.
I’ve been watching a lot of videos on frame failure on this big rigs and one of the contributing factors may be putting so much weight in one spot. Yes these rigs including mine are rated for a lot of weight but when it’s not evenly not distributed throughout the rig it may cause an issue.
Thank you for watching our video and supporting our channel! We appreciate your feedback about the frame flex. It is definitely a hot topic and a concern for sure.
Hey guys, I've been seeing a lot of videos on frame flex which is probably due to owners overloading cargo areas that are not designed to carry all the batteries, tools, and other heavy stuff people concentrate in the cargo area, which overload the frame causing Frame damage. Which is the owners fault not the manufacturer. Check out Big Truck Big RV videos on this. I own a 2022 Reflection 337RLS. Good luck and love your channel.
Thank you for watching our video and the BTBRV recommendation, we love his channel. We recently watched a few of his Lippert videos and frame flex, they were definitely worth the watch. Thank you for supporting our channel!
So, here is a question. How does a solar installer, an end-user, determine what weight is acceptable inside of that basement for all the batteries and all the gear, and then, on top of that there is probably also items stored underneath the bed, and the frame manufacturers, and the RV manufacturers, never disclose acceptable weight limits in those areas, nor do they disclose the actual frames installed on the units, nor do they disclose the weight limitations throughout the RV. Are you not worried about frame failure, given everything that is going on? With all those batteries all that equipment plus a generator I would be interested to know what the CCC is on that unit and the pin weight calculations that were done to ensure it is safe and won’t cause a frame failure.
Thank you for watching the video and supporting our channel. We bring up a lot of good questions and items that have to be considered when building a massive solar system. We are not sure what the answers are for each question, it would definitely be a good idea to get that information in advance to building out a massive system.
That's the sweetness right there. As soon as I saw it, I said to myself, "Great minds think alike" as my rooftop solar array looks a lot like this one. That's a high dollar, professionally designed and built system though. We're old, retired FTers who designed and built our system ourselves, on a tight budget. It took us 5 years to gather the resources to complete it, doing all the work ourselves.
We started by building a 620-watt liftable solar array on the side of our motorhome. It makes a nice bedroom window awning too, practically lifting itself with a couple gas struts, and it's easy to clean, standing safely on the ground. Next, we built a 12v, 560ah LiFePo-4 battery with 8, 280ah prismatic cells. We use a Heltec 330amp BMS with a 5a active balancer. It cost us less than $1,500 to build this 7.1 kwh battery, including the high amp BMS. We chose these cells rather than a pre-built battery because they fit perfectly under the steps of our MH where our old pair of golf cart batteries used to reside. We insulated the battery compartment, cut a small hole in our step risers and installed a tiny computer CPU fan to keep this space at close to room temperature, so we don't have to worry about the BMS shutting down charging due to low temperature - or their life reduced from getting too hot. Our 12v system uses an 80A Progressive Dynamics LFP converter/charger, a 1,000w Renogy inverter, a 50a Epever MPPT charge controller and a Lnex battery monitor.
By mounting the solar array on the side of our coach, we left the roof free to rack 8, 550w solar panels (4,400 watts) down the length of our 35ft Class A, 15" off our roof, above our AC, vents, etc. It looks a lot like this CCRV rack. We built the rack our of 2" aluminum angle with the front 2 panels of ours sloping down at a shallower 9.5-degrees to meet the roof, gently easing airflow over the array. It covers our entire roof too, providing some nice shade with plenty of cooling air underneath, increasing solar output and reducing the heat load on the air conditioners too, though our overall height is still just under 12 ft. We mounted our Sungold Power all-in-one 48V, 5,000W Inverter/100A charge controller/battery charger, breakers and a Lnex battery monitor on the wall in our bedroom, saving us space as well as money. The 48v battery that resides under our bed uses 16, 320ah prismatic cells and a 200amp Heltec BMS to keep it safe. Together with our 560ah 12v bank, we have a total of 23.5 kwh of batteries onboard - kept charged by 5,020 watts of solar. We added about 500 lbs. to our roof and about 800 lbs. overall, as we removed about 300lbs from our MH to make room for extra weight. Ours is a little smaller than this CCRV system, but it's sized for our needs in a smaller RV. For instance, our MH came from the factory with 2, 13.5k btu rooftop A/Cs. We removed the rooftop A/C we had in the bedroom and replaced it with an EG4 28.5 seer-2, 12k btu mini-split heat pump on the upper rear of our motorhome. It's super quiet and cools as well as our 14.5k btu soft start equipped Furrion we installed up front. This second phase provides 24/7 off-grid air conditioning and heat from the heat pump. We can run both A/Cs and charge our batteries from solar at the same time, even in winter. We have a total of 6,000 watts of 120v inverted ac power, giving us off-grid electrical self-sufficiency for a total budget of around $11,500, (including the high-efficiency heat pump.) This fit our budget and is only a fraction of what a similarly sized, professionally designed and built system would be. This allows us to keep our aging 5,500w generator in reserve, for back-up use only.
Take care, we hope to see you down the road one day.
Wow you have put together a great system. The design sounds amazing! Thank you for watching our video and supporting our channel.
Do a vid on yours @SuperSushidog
We agree, it would be great to see the solar setup.
This IS totally amazing. Which panels did he use? Those are 550W each?? 6600W / 12 right? Wow.
Thank you for watching our video and supporting our channel. We greatly appreciate you taking the time to check our little piece of the world. He used 550 Watt Bifacial panels. He gets a massive amount of power off of the roof.
Nice set up. Do you know how much weight you added to the front end?
Thank you for watching the tour of our friends solar system. He mentioned the weight it added overall, but not specifically to the front end.
If you don’t need your macbook 💻anymore i’ll take it out of your hands 😅😁
Thank you for watching our video.
😂😂 No. we still need our MacBook, it’s perfect for travel days & other features for our website & newsletters.
Great video. Thanks.
Thank you for watching our video.
Great video thanks for always putting out informative and helpful stuff you guys are the best can’t wait see you guys next month 😊
Thank you for watching our video, this is a very impressive RV solar system. Looking forward to seeing you next month as well, safe travels 💖
I’ve been watching a lot of videos on frame failure on this big rigs and one of the contributing factors may be putting so much weight in one spot. Yes these rigs including mine are rated for a lot of weight but when it’s not evenly not distributed throughout the rig it may cause an issue.
Thank you for watching our video and supporting our channel! We appreciate your feedback about the frame flex. It is definitely a hot topic and a concern for sure.
Hey guys, I've been seeing a lot of videos on frame flex which is probably due to owners overloading cargo areas that are not designed to carry all the batteries, tools, and other heavy stuff people concentrate in the cargo area, which overload the frame causing Frame damage. Which is the owners fault not the manufacturer. Check out Big Truck Big RV videos on this. I own a 2022 Reflection 337RLS. Good luck and love your channel.
Thank you for watching our video and the BTBRV recommendation, we love his channel. We recently watched a few of his Lippert videos and frame flex, they were definitely worth the watch. Thank you for supporting our channel!
So, here is a question. How does a solar installer, an end-user, determine what weight is acceptable inside of that basement for all the batteries and all the gear, and then, on top of that there is probably also items stored underneath the bed, and the frame manufacturers, and the RV manufacturers, never disclose acceptable weight limits in those areas, nor do they disclose the actual frames installed on the units, nor do they disclose the weight limitations throughout the RV. Are you not worried about frame failure, given everything that is going on?
With all those batteries all that equipment plus a generator I would be interested to know what the CCC is on that unit and the pin weight calculations that were done to ensure it is safe and won’t cause a frame failure.
Thank you for watching the video and supporting our channel. We bring up a lot of good questions and items that have to be considered when building a massive solar system. We are not sure what the answers are for each question, it would definitely be a good idea to get that information in advance to building out a massive system.