Solar Install

[Itsawanderlustfullife]

Anyone here have a 2020 Heartland big country with solar? We have a 2020 Big County 3902 FL and the solar guy says it's not possible for him to hook up our solar to run the outlets in our RV because in the RV circuit breakers, there are only 1 positive wire and 2 ground wires, and there's nowhere to connect the system to it. Any experience with this?

His solution was to run extension cords inside from the inverter to power up to 4 things inside, this just isn't an option for us.

 

[david-steph2018]

You may be able to install a second breaker panel just for the items you wish to run off solar.
We had a full rig solar system installed for our Road Warrior; we can run anything in our rig off of solar.

 

[LBR]

You may be able to install a second breaker panel just for the items you wish to run off solar.
We had a full rig solar system installed for our Road Warrior; we can run anything in our rig off of solar.

That's what I did in our 2017 CY...full-house 3K inverter. IMO, the only downfall is if you don't educate those who frequent the inside about inverter limitations when off-grid.

 

[Bogie]

I would suggest you talk to another solar installer. One who has RV experience.

I also have 3KW inverter with 350 Ah of Lithium batteries. Like LBR said. Just have to make sure you manage the load so as not to overload the inverter. Or, install a larger inverter. I use a pair of transfer switches so the whole coach is either powered by shore power, the generator or the inverter.

 

[rmeyer]

Anyone here have a 2020 Heartland big country with solar? We have a 2020 Big County 3902 FL and the solar guy says it's not possible for him to hook up our solar to run the outlets in our RV because in the RV circuit breakers, there are only 1 positive wire and 2 ground wires, and there's nowhere to connect the system to it. Any experience with this?

His solution was to run extension cords inside from the inverter to power up to 4 things inside, this just isn't an option for us.

I have 2nd breaker panel for the 110 volt plugs. Work's great

 

[david-steph2018]

That's what I did in our 2017 CY...full-house 3K inverter. IMO, the only downfall is if you don't educate those who frequent the inside about inverter limitations when off-grid.

We had 2–3000-watt inverters, one for each leg. We also went with 960AH of lithium batteries installed. On the roof is 1600-watts of panels.

 

[SLO]

Get another solar guy. It is indeed possible to do what you want. You will need more parts than just the solar panels though.


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[SAIL4FREE]

We've been living fulltime and offgrid in our 33' 5th wheel for 8 years and 3 months with no end in sight. In all that time we have never used the grid or a generator to charge our house bank and I maintain we *never* will! Our converter had a minor issue so I just removed it and we power up our 12 volt fuse panel direct from our bank of six batteries. We have a 3,000 watt inverter and I simply added an RV style 30 amp outlet right next to the inverter (aka the "hardwire option" as we don't use any of the outlets on the inverter itself) and we plug the factory cord into that 30 amp outlet. We recently acquired a 2020 Torque M-373 and I hope to build a similar solar power system in it.
So if anyone can tell me where the converter is in our new rig, that would be helpful. I prefer this hardwire approach because it keeps things simple = easy to diagnose if there is ever a problem, etc. . . . and no problematic transfer switches. So my hope is to isolate the converter as we have no plans to use it anyway and set things up so that all of our 12 volt loads (including the 420 watt four-door fridge) will be powered by solar only. We do have the 5,500 watt onboard generator which pulls fuel from our 20 gallon onboard fueling station but in my perfect world, that will only ever be used to power one or both of our roof A/C units which will be rare living as we do because we never pay for a place to BE. We spend our "winters" in the southwest where it's nice and warm all winter long for FREE and we spend our summers in the northwest. In this way, we spend very little for heat and zero for air conditioning.
At this point, I'm contemplating adding a 2nd 50 amp port/outlet inside the garage so I can use the factory cord inside to plug into an added 50-amp outlet which will be on a power box I'll build with the 4 230 amp hour LiFePO4 batteries and the 3,000 watt inverter inside. This will preserve the option for a future owner to plug into shore power using the factory cord and the factory outlet/port. Just a matter of removing the factory cord from inside and plugging it in outside. Receptive to *constructive* commentary only and again, the location of that converter would be helpful.