Open Range 337RLS 5th wheel

Reed · Senior Member

Open Range 337RLS 5th wheel

Dougwe · Chief one feather

I think you should be ashamed leading that lifestyle biggrin biggrin

Looks a great set up Reed and Elaine.

I love the portable Solar Power Plant you carry around too biggrin

Cruising Cruze · Guru

Hi Reed

First of all welcome to this forum

Wow impressive bit of kit you've got

we are lucky to live in Qld we use a 3kw Solar system and every year we get around $1000 back

from Ergon Energy ( our power supplier ) and free use of power that's until the contract ends in 2018

So the whole system paid for itself many times over

For the caravan we use 2 portable panels one of 120 & 80 watts and that runs all our lights and runs a 70 ltr

fridge/freezer, TV when we use it, and charging our phones and tablets

Solar is a magic thing I think

Cheers John

Plendo · Guru

Welcome Reed and Elaine, and thank you for describing your setup.

In Australia 5th wheelers are increasing in number, but still represent a very small part of our RV landscape. The majority of people on the road use what we call caravans (I think you refer to them as travel trailers). Fuel prices are also a little different, as here we pay about $1.60 per litre, which equates to just over $6 a gallon for diesel.

Most vans come with one or two panels, charging the 12V house battery (lights, pumps, tv etc), but still need to be plugged in to a power pole to run mains (240V AC) devices like air conditioning, microwave, washing machine, etc.

I am one of a growing number of exceptions where I have a caravan with a roof full of solar (1,200W) feeding a 24V lithium battery system (8 * 200Ah Winston cells in series), which in turn feeds power back into the van through a 3Kw inverter and a 24V to 12V charger. The whole setup is relatively new, and as such we are still going through optimising the setup.

Do you run a battery management system on your 48V battery?

Reed · Senior Member

Thanks for the kind replies. We had a 28' caravan for four years and loved it but we are full-timers (sold the 'sticks and bricks' as we we call a fixed home seven years) and Elaine wanted something larger and I wanted something smaller. You can see where this went. The size is a help and a hinderence. We have had seven family members come down to visit and stay with us on the beach in Yucatan (1700 miles from the border, 2700 km). Four slept in tents with the Iguanas and Hermit Crabs wandering by. The size has kept us from utilizing spots we loved in backcountry of Arizona and jungles of Yucatan. If we had your fuel prices, we would certainly be way downsized. The cost for gasoline was $5.00/gallon when we went to Alaska six years ago. It was an empty highway through the Yukon. It was so bad that 1/3rd of the fuel stations were closed.

Plendo - 1200 W worth of panels on a carvant/trailer is considered large in the US. Right now only a small number in US have much solar other than boondockers and they all have solar to some degree. Most have 100 to 300 W which is quite enough to charge the batteries as you have noted.

Almost all large rig folks in US just go from RV park to RV park and spend $40 to $70/night surrounded by dozens or hundred of others. Many are just nervous to afraid about boondocking. We discussed putting on another 700 W but decided that we had quite enough as it is. Son told me "Dad, you only have this much to impress the other boondockers!" "Wait a minute Cary, it was your idea to make an autonomous solar system and you talked me into it!" "Yes, but you were so easy to convince." Following the major solar fora, I can find only two others in US that have lithium batteries at this time (other than the $1.8M Liberty Coaches) although there is a huge mob that are "lurking about the fora" and whining about cost and worrying about burning/blowing up. The general consensus seems to be "let the pioneers get the arrows in their backs and then we shall decide." You note that you have 8*200 Ah Winston cells in series while we have 16*180 Ah CALB cells in series. Each of the 4 batteries (4*180 Ah CALB cells in series) has a battery management system (BMS) and we have several monitors that (I being basically OCD check during the day): Manzanita Micro panel that gives the voltage of each cell, voltage of bank, charging rate in watts, discharge level in watts; Magnum inverter monitorl that is on/off switch and voltage (happily Manzanita and Magnum do give the same values); and the TriStar controller monitor that gives charge rate in W and amps (48 V nominal), charge state (float, absorb, MPPT). I have read that Australians have been far more open to new ideas in caravaning than the US and you are a definite example.

We have changed all lights (interior and exterior) to LED. Generally, we do not have to be terribly energy conscious but we do have several models of energy usage:
High summer with lots of solar: run the Dometic fridge24 hours on AC which leaves us with a -3000 Whr deficit in morning
run the air conditioner during day on solar/batteries for up to 3.5 hours or run it in evening for an hour on batteries

Not a lot of solar in summer: run the Dometic friddge during the day and maybe run the air conditioner in the evening to cool things down

Winter: Run the fridge on AC on bright days and propane otherwise. Turn off the inverter (50 W drain) when not in use.

We were caught in 8" (20 cm) of snow for three days. Still got 100 W of solar through the snow and ran the forced air heater for that time (it was 20 F or about -7 C)

Cruzing Cruze - Australia seems to be ahead of US on the use of solar. The power companies are doing their best to legislate solar to their advantage, e.g make it very difficult to tie into grid and get power company to pay back on power. They tried to make it $1000 US to tie into grid with solar but the voters stopped that. From what you write, it appears that your companies may be doing the same with your power contract ending in 2018. It is all about power and money.

Reed and Elaine

Plendo · Guru

Interesting to compare the terminology between our environments, here we refer to "Free Camping" you refer to it as "Boondocking", I wonder if it stirs up as much feeling among your RV community as it does among ours. There are a couple of guides to free camps here, they range from simple road side stops to separate reserves around lakes and things, the guides list thousands of these across our country, many people spend large percentages of their time in free camps.

You are right about Australians having an element of early adopters, there is a community of people here who have adopted LifePo4 batteries, along with large amounts of solar. The founders of this group have done a huge amount of work to develop and prove the use of these great batteries. Unfortunately they met with a large amount of resistance and skepticism which they have taken somewhat personally. The group now has solutions that are viable for the masses, but they are not being advertised or promoted.

We run our battery without any BMS, but I now only charge to 27.2 V (3.4v / cell), I also have a very small balancing unit, and everything stays in balance beautifully I chose to use 24V, as there is a mass of good equipment available to suit. You are right, 1,200w is a lot on the roof, but I can not see why I should not be able to use things like air conditioning when free camping, thus our air con is also different, it is a Fujitsu split system, runs flat out cooling on 2.8A All of our lighting is led, Our biggest power drain is an all electric Vitrifrigo compressor fridge.

Our solar consists of three strings of four 100W semi flexible panel, the strings are then linked in parallel and fed into a 50A MPPT charger from MPP Solar, The DC in the van is still 12v, fed from a 12V AGM battery which is in turn charged by a 24V to 12V charger. The majority of the power is consumed through a 3kw low frequency inverter from Yuen technology in China.

It all fits together fairly well, the only wrinkle is the high idle current on the low frequency inverter, so we now turn it off when we are not using it, means we had to add a remote switch inside the van. Now I am working on a key chain remote for the inverter.

Yes I am sure a large percentage of the people on the forum can not understand why we have done what we have done, but it works for me, and it was a technical challenge just to get it working right, and I love doing what has not been done before.

Reed · Senior Member

Plendo was going to request your provide a photograph of your rig (as we call it) but it looks like you have it on your post. Have enjoyed your posts
The term boondocking means a lot of different things to different folks and they can get rather vociferous about defending their opinion and attacking others. A lot consider anytime not hooked up to line power, line water and sewer to be boondocking aka overnighting at a Walmart or Costco parking lot. Others slightly more advanced (or degenerative) is mootchdocking or set up in backyard/street/driveway of friend or relative with/without a 15 amp (110 V) power cord attached. Further along would be dry camping (no hookups or sewer) in National Park, Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, Bureau of Reclaimation (dam sites) etc campgrounds. Then comes what most would accept as boondocking in dispersed unprepared sites with no one else around.
Most US (Americans includes anyone from northern Canada to Argentina) are pretty conservative when it comes to RVing. They are not happy unless they have: 50 amps (110 V) line power, lots of line water, sewer, and cable TV. Solar is still quite uncommon except for boondockers and almost all of them have 100 to 400 W. Then they are arguing on for about how they have problems managing PbS with sulfation, water etc problems. They get irate about folks talking about the advantages of LFP with diatribes on fire/explosions, expense etc. The same thing happened with the horseless carriage. I saw an old Scientific American from the 1960s which had an advertisement from GE disparaging solid state (transistors at the time) with the idea that valve technology (vacuum tubes in the US) was proven and established and we scarcely needed some fly by night unproven and unreliable technology horning in.
One of the more informed and informative posters on US solar fora goes by PNJunction. He has stated that while the electrical vehicle crowd needs BMS, we in the RV world do not since we do not have the extreme power loads that EVs require. Manzanita Micro packages their LFP for the EV world and it came with a sophisticated BMS. It works and were happy. PNJunction figures that the more you put into a system, the more that can go wrong and advocates the KISS outlook, Keep it simple, stupid!
Elaine and I are interest in further information on your Fujitsu split system air con. Our current Dometic takes 1.5 kW to operate and should like something that would operate on solar along (we can get up to 1.3 kW at maximum insolation). Also have interest in your Vitrifrigo compressor fridge. Our fridge is a Dometic propane/AC system which works very well on propane but is a real energy hog on AC. We have had little problem utilizing fridge and a/c on successive bright days but lower power requirements would be great. Have read about a 48V DC system that uses 750W compared to the Dometic 1500W. This would work well with our system.
Son Cary went with 48 V since he designs and fabricates for businesses and high voltage means less voltage/power loss in moderately long cable runs.
It appears that our systems are fairly similar. Heck didnt even know that MPPT stood for Maximum Power Point Tracking until yesterday. I thought the nomenclature for the TriStar MPPT-45 was some internal indexing. We do not go through a 12 V battery but rather through a Magnum 4.0 pure sine wave inverter and a controller.
Our inverter uses about 50 W so we also turn ours off when not using. We have a remote switch (as noted above somewhere). When we know that we shall have solar insolation on the following day, we leave the inverter on and run the fridge on AC all night as well as all day. This results in an energy deficit of perhaps -3000 W (35% depth of discharge, DOD)
Yes I am sure a large percentage of the people on the forum can not understand why we have done what we have done, but it works for me, and it was a technical challenge just to get it working right, and I love doing what has not been done befor
As noted, son Cary has BS in electro-mechanical engineering, almost 30 years in field, is a licensed master electrican and electrical contractor and first licensed alternative energy contractor in NM. Franklly, I am tool challenge: some say that if I cannot do it readily with a hammer and a crowbar and the associated WD-40/duct tape, I just look for a bigger hammer. I may resemble such calumnies, but I can do most general repairs/maintenance about the rig. I was a physicist and can tell you how and why but would be very hesitant to even start designing and fabricating a rig such as either of us have. Congratulations on doing the work yourself.

Dougwe · Chief one feather

I love reading the posts you two (Reed and Plando) are putting up here. I'm lost, nearly, even though I am friends with Plendo, he gets me lost all the time.

Sure makes my big rig look small. By the way Reed, I parked along side David at one stage and couldn't find my way out his door when leaving from a visit.

Keep these good posts coming.

Power to the people. Well Plendo and Reed anyway.

Plendo · Guru

Hi Reed, sounds as if your son has you well sorted. It sounds as if he is well qualified and has put together a ripper of a system to keep you in power. However it sounds as if your needs are now exceeding your systems ability to supply in some circumstances

Here the term free camper is used in many situations, some are real lovers of the peace and quite they get when they camp away from others out in the bush, a growing group of free campers are people who spend long periods on the road (some are full time), and they camp in areas that are free or low cost, only occasionally visiting caravan parks. There is a growing dislike of generators, so solar is becoming more popular.

Carol and I have set our rig up with the intention of joining this last group for a few years once I retire. We bought a luxury van with a full en suite, air conditioning, microwave, washing machine etc. But in standard form it needs to be plugged into a power pole to use the AC items. To overcome this we have designed the power system that we have built into the van.

The power system consists of the following components:

Solar panels are 100W light weight semi flexible panels (1.3kg each) glued on top of thermal panels, then directly to the roof of the van.

Each set of four panels is wired independently to the boot on the front of the van where they are connected in parallel to a fuse, then through a solid state relay to the solar charger.

The solar charger is a PCM 5048 from MPP Solar, it is a fully programmable 50 amp unit. This unit was selected because the charging voltages are fully programmable, it also has some smarts tracking state of charge (SOC), and some switching circuits that can be programed based on things like SOC.

http://www.mppsolar.com/v3/catalogs/PCM5048_8048.pdf

I have mentioned the battery earlier, it is made of eight 200ah cells, inked in series as two blocks of four cells (two 12v batteries in series). There is another fuse on top of the battery, then to a main power switch before it is connected to anything.

240V alternating current is produced by a 3Kw (max 9kw on overload) low frequency (the type with a large transformer) inverter, it is heavy (31kg), but it delivers great clean power. The only problem is the high idle current mentioned earlier. It now also has a remote switch installed inside the van.

http://www.yiyen.com/portfolio/apc-series-pure-sine-wave-inverter-charger/

The microwave and washing machine are standard, but the standard air conditioner was a roof mounted unit that draw almost 1,700W on cooling, and even more on heating. It also consumed valuable roof real estate. We deleted the standard unit when the van was built, and fitted the Fujitsu split system with inverter technology, it draw up to 700w and delivers as much cooling as the standard unit.

This is a link to the Fujitsu unit:

https://www.fujitsugeneral.com.au/product/astg07cmca-(cooling-only)---2.1kw(c)?category=Lifestyle%20Range&roomsize=SMALL%20ROOM#specificationsTab

and this is a link on the American web site.

http://www.fujitsugeneral.com/wallmountedRLS2_specs.htm

The fridge is a 230L vtrifrigo unit, commonly used in marine applications. It is very quiet, and runs on 12v. It simply works as you expect a fridge to work, keeps stuff cold in the fridge, and frozen in freezer, and it is quiet. Just does the job.

Our van a Retreat Brampton is built to be energy efficient from the start, it is well insulated, all led lights etc.

http://www.retreatcaravans.com.au/brampton-product

We tow all of this around with a Landrover Discovery diesel, not a common tow vehicle here (most vans are towed by Toyotas), but I believe it is probably the best tow vehicle of its size.

The van has an ATM (maximum legal weight) of 3,495 KG, and the Discovery can tow 3,500kg. Last trip the van weighed in at 3,300 kg fully loaded.

I will try to post a set of photos in the near future.

Magyar Connection · Veteran Member

Like Doug, I have enjoyed reading about Reed and Plendo's rigs and the great lengths you have both gone to be independent of RV Parks/Caravan Parks. I don't claim to understand all of the technical stuff but I get the general idea.

We have just registered on the Grey Nomad forum although we have had a van and motorhome for some time. Yes, we currently have both! We own a 32' Windsport motorhome in the USA and tour with it for three months each (Northern) summer. In Australia we own a 22' Evernew van which we have not used as much as we would like but in the next few years we plan to do some extended touring around Aust - maybe even a complete 'lap'. We have one solar panel on the van but none on the motorhome. We are currently in an RV Park North of Toronto, Canada.

I won't hijack this thread with further detail and will get around to including details on our rigs in the near future.

Looking forward to seeing Reed's reply to Plendo's latest post. Good luck guys.

Reed · Senior Member

Magyar Connection
I do not think you would be hijacking this thread in giving details on your rig. So jump in or start another thread but let me know when you do. We are jealous of your RV'ing/caravaning in both great countries.

We pull with a 2006 Chevie 6.6 l diesel 4 x 4 dualie (four wheels on rear axle). This has a 35 gallon tank and a 50 gallon Transfer-Flow auxiliary tank (about 300 l total). We bought a 2006 since it handles the low (500 ppm sulphur) that diesels since then cannot. We are weight police and take the rig to CAT scales at trucking stops to weigh every once in a while. The rear axles of the trailer have a total rating of 10,400 lbs (4700 kg) and the tires are rated at 3500# each (we are changing to Goodyear H (14 ply full steel belted and side-walled for Mexico). We are at 9300 pounds on rear axle fully loaded with 100# of propane and 81 gallons of fresh water.
Rear axle of dualie is rated at 8300# and we are at 7300# with 85 gallons of fuel and 30 gallons of fresh water in 5 x 6 gallon containers. Have read that 50% of US RVers are overweight and 25% are critically overweight. Folks seem nonchalant about this but we dont want to be down in Belize with a blown rear axle. They have certified GMC/Chevie dealerships that do excellent work but just would be unhappy being stranded in the middle of Chiapas at nightfall.
We are only exceeding systems when we have to use a/c for more than 4 hours where we would be down to 55% depth of discharge (DOD) even though we would still have another 35% to go. It is prudent to be careful with DOD even with LFP. We could easily put 470 W more on roof with a possibility of 715. This would permit running current Dometic a/c full bore on solar alone. Son is on short list to put in a 1.6 megawatt system (his second) and will hopefully be to busy to redesign, fabricate and reprogram for the next several months. Since we are Goldilockers as in not to hot, not to cold, just right we choose to go where it is cooler when it gets hot. We have only used a/c when family wanted to go to lake in southern NM to sail and jet ski, or when we were in RV parks visiting family in large cities.
A great thing about North America is the variety of climates and elevations. May have written earlier that we were at son Charlies in Fort Collins, CO two years ago and it 103 F in town (40 C or so) so we went up to 10,400 (3160 m) and it was down to about 38 F at night (4 C). This was 90 minutes and perhaps 70 km from Fort Collins.
You wrote Solar panels are 100W light weight semi flexible panels (1.3kg each) glued on top of thermal panels, then directly to the roof of the van Discussed this with son and he does not like the heat buildup when panels are glued to roof. There is a definite drop off in efficiency with temperature but it has to be purty durned hot but it can get there. The weight sounds great though.
We have a TriStar MPPT-45 controller (maximum power point tracker a term I did not know till a few days ago). It is fully programmable and the battery bank has a sophisticated BMS (may have written this already)
Have done cursory look at the sites you posted. The fridge and a/c would be great but things are working extremely well as it is. As noted we could put on another 700 W of solar and another 4.5 kW-h of LFP but this would cost a lot and require a lot of our sons time. 750 W a/c would permit all day use with solar only but then we try to avoid hot places.

Reed and Elaine

Reed · Senior Member

Magyar Connection

Hope you start a thread about your tours in USA/Canada and Australia. Should enjoy reading about comparisons of travel and life styles.
Reed and Elaine

Magyar Connection · Veteran Member

Thanks Reed,

I will try to start a thread on our rigs before we leave the US on 9th October. Although, I have no expertise in complex solar stuff, there is one aspect of the USA/Australia electrical differences that may come into play on yours and Plendo's rigs. In Australia, with our major AC appliances operating on 240V, we require half of the amperage to similar appliances in the USA on 120V AC. I realise that this doesn't apply to operating 12V DC stuff such as Plendo's fridge set up.

A typical Aussie caravan uses a single 15 Amp power supply (which will operate all the appliances) whereas, here in the USA the typical RV uses a 30Amp or 50Amp supply. My motor home is set up for 50Amp and even though I have a 50 Amp cable, I only use a 30 Amp (with the appropriate 50 Amp connection) because I got fed up messing about with the 50 Amp cable. For other Aussies reading this, I should let you know that the US 50 Amp cable is about 25mm thick and very heavy!

I'm not an electrician so please excuse me if what I'm saying does not apply to your respective set ups. I have previously spent quite a lot of time in the US whilst with the Australian Air Force and so I am used to operating Aussie stuff in the USA and visa versa!

We don't have a lot of the big 5th wheelers in Australia so your rig being pulled by the big Chevy would be quite a sight on our roads. We tow a small Chevy Cobalt behind our motorhome.

Plendo · Guru

It is good to see the community growing, and I am really looking forward to hearing some more of the differences between our great environments from Magyar Connection who has experienced RVing on both sides of the ditch.

I like the term Goldilockers, it describes the perfect way to be.

Your reference to weight is pertinent, as we have had some questions here questioning the legality of some people's rigs, all around weight, and also equipment used.

The weights most people here have to live with are much more modest than the numbers you are talking about. Apart from a very small number of imported trucks (Chevies, and Ford F series mainly), most vehicles are limited to towing somewhere between 2,200kg and 3,500kg. THe vast majority of vans would have an ATM (All up tare mass) less than 3,000kg, weight really limits what most people pack.

I understand your son's concern re solar panels without an air gap under them. I understand the performance degradation with heat, my panels get to well over 70 degrees C, and at that level they are about 83% efficient. However using lightweight panels allows me to use more panels, and this far outweighs the effect of the thermal degradation. It would be ideal if I could devise a way to mount these panels on a light weight structure to form a tropical roof, but given the wind effect on top of the vehicle, I could not devise a good mounting system. It is a great big (and expensive) experiment.

Reed · Senior Member

If were were paying well over $5/gallon for fuel, I might well have a much smaller unit, but then it is our home.

I definitely believe that your choice of greatly reduced coast and ease in mounting is preferable to weight and problems in mounting. As you note, spacing them 3 or 4 cm above the roof does cool the panels to some degree and does provide a "tropical roof". If you did make a light weight structure for your semi-flexible panels, you would still have to emplace them on the structure via adhesive.

There have been numerous discussions in Open Road (RV.Net) about means of bolting/gluing/taping panels. The best installer in US is probably AM Solar in Oregon and they install their rigid panels via adhesive strips. They also sell a lot of kits with the same means of using adhesive tape to hold down the panels. It is our son's belief that flexible panels do not have the efficiency of rigid but that they are improving greatly (as are a lot of things in solar world). He has his paradigms and I am not arguing. I have always found that telling professionals how to do their business is not appreciated - but I still sometimes do it without meaning to.

Black surfaces can really get hot in the SW of the US.

Look forward to Magyar Connections posts.

Reed and Elaine

We retired and sold our "sticks and bricks" seven years ago and have been on the road since.

The trailer is insulated for four seasons (folks in Alberta winter in them) and has double pane windows. These make a real difference in both hot and cold conditions.