We go green! 290 watts of Zamp solar panels installed

Installation - planning

"Plan your work, then work your plan." The planning phase of this install is really critical and you should take as much time as necessary to completely think through the process. Basically you need to mount the solar panels on the roof, bring the cable down and inside the unit to the charge controller, cable the controller regulated output to the battery bank. It sounds simple but there are several factors to consider for an ideal install.

Where to mount the solar panels (referred to from now on as "panels")? For an RV this will typically be on the roof of the unit. Your ideal location will allow walking access to areas of the roof necessary for maintenance and cleaning. Plan ahead for that extra panel install - save some room on the roof to add another panel. Think about if any satellite dish (or other stuff on the roof) is going to cast a shadow on the prospective panel location. Location of the charge controller is another factor that could have a bearing on where you locate the panels. Your ideal roof location might not be the shortest path to the controller, you want to minimize the total length of the wiring as much as possible.

Speaking of the charge controller, you need to mount the controller in a location where you can ideally hide the wiring from the panels and to the battery bank, and where you can easily see the controller (it's fun to watch the sun turn your purchase into energy!) The controller can be either surface or flush mounted. I wanted to flush mount ours, but that wasn't possible for where we chose. (You might have to make some compromises here and there in order to satisfy all job requirements.)

And while you're trying to figure out where to mount the panels and charge controller, you also need a path for the wire from the controller output to your battery bank. So, lots of factors to consider when planning the install - think of it as planning a system with several interconnected parts.

While ideally you should wire the controller output directly to the battery bank, that might not be very practical. Since going directly to our house battery bank would have been almost impossible (certainly not practical), second choice was to wire the controller output to our house battery bank disconnect solenoid. This solenoid had very large gauge wire that went back to the battery bank, so it would be a very good alternative. After about 30 minutes of trying to fish a wire to this solenoid, I gave up on that idea. Third choice (and a good one) for us was to wire to our DC circuit breaker buss - there were two fairly large gauge cables from that buss to the house battery disconnect solenoid, so I decided that would work.

We are fortunate with our Winnebago Industries product to have a "OnePlace" wiring center - this area contains meters, gauges and various switches in one column with a nice wiring chase that goes from the ceiling to the floor, so this was an obvious location for the controller location so we can hide the wiring. Your RV might have a refrigerator (not mounted on a slideout) that would be a good candidate to bring the panel output wiring down the vent space behind the fridge, so don't overlook that possibility.

If there is no practical way to hide the wiring, it can always be surface mounted on a wall or bulkhead and covered up with custom wood molding or even a surface mount cable raceway. Again I had to make a compromise and have a couple of inches of exposed wire from the roof to the Winnebago OnePlace center. Unfortunately our roof air (one of our mods) covers up the top part of the OnePlace raceway so I couldn't completely hide the wiring. A little wood trim will solve this cosmetic problem.

Page 1 - Introduction
Page 2 - This page
Page 3 - Tools, supplies required, job start
Page 4 - Installation - on the roof
Page 5 - Installation - inside the coach
Page 6 - Project wrap-up, final thoughts, panel performance