We have POWER!

We received a package in the mail today. We didn't write anything about it before, but - the shipping company lost our original shipment of a charge controller and battery temperature sensor. So, the company we ordered it from overnighted one to us Friday - which showed up today. With the charge controller finally here, we were able to make use of those beautiful panels installed on our roof.

We had finished up all the exterior wiring the last sunny day. We still had a lot of interior wiring to finish. We made a run to Jerry's and picked up some 6 gauge wire to finish up the wiring inside between the charge controller and the battery bank. My goal with this project was to keep the wiring and related mess out of sight and have as little impact on the trailer as possible. That meant I had to do some creative wire routing to get from where the power came in to the trailer from the panels to the battery bank and then tied into the wiring of the trailer.

Once we had the wires run to and from where they needed to go, I took some time to put in some circuit breakers. I put a 30 amp breaker between the batteries and the charge controller. And I put a 50 amp breaker between the bank of trojans and the bank of RV batteries. We didn't actually wire the RV batteries to the trojans today because I'd like to install a bank selection switch between them so I don't have to put them all together in one bank.

The final step was connecting the batteries to the charge controller. And then, connecting the solar panels to the charge controller. As soon as the panels were connected, Becky climbed up on the roof and pulled the cardboard covers off the panels. We immediately started to see a charge despite the fact that it was overcast, raining, and after 5pm! Once the panels were exposed, I had Becky take a picture of the beautiful panels.

There is still a little work to do to secure the wiring. The new charge controller looks great, and all the wiring is hidden inside closets. It's really nice working with the trailer where everything is easy to access and already in place. It's a big change from the bus, where we had to construct everything from scratch. Picture to the right shows the new charge controller (little black box). Tomorrow if the weather is not too bad, we will work on connecting the two battery banks together and do an "official" off the grid day to see how it goes.