has anyone hooked up a solar system to their hall?

I have 2 panels that I keep in the closet and connect to the charge controller via a 50' pair of #14 conductors. Not that I'm not a fan, having been in the solar business for 34 years, but I don't want to mess up the clean roof lines, or introduce potential leak points. Besides; the only place that a roof-mounted system works is in full sun, which is not where I want to be in the Summer. Unless there's no alternative, of course. Having PV on a long cord allows you to put the collectors where the sun is, not your RV. I keep them hooked up all the time to keep the house bats happy.

Matt, what do you think of this HF kit? http://www.harborfreight.com/45-watt-so ... -8527.html

I've got a coupon to get it for $150.

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Nick Taylor - Green & White 1974 Hall GTC.
www.NicksGarage.com == www.HallGTC.com == www.NicksTeardrop.com

45 Watts for 150.00 = around $3.40/Watt. You can buy a much larger, better panel for around $1.50/Watt on-line. However, if you do go with a big one you need to keep in mind where it gets stored when not in use. I have a little 35 Watt and a bigger 70 Watt that I hook up in parallel. If you look around you should be able to score something in the 50 to 75 Watt range for very little money.

What about charge controllers.

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Nick Taylor - Green & White 1974 Hall GTC.
www.NicksGarage.com == www.HallGTC.com == www.NicksTeardrop.com

There are a number of really good, really inexpensive versions available these days. The one I have is extremely good, Chinese (of all things), very small and continuously varies the "finish" voltage to keep the acid in an active state. I'll see if I can get the name and let you know. I mounted mine right on the front of the battery drawer near the PV input connection. Very simple; no meter - just one LED for "charging" and one for "charged".

Do the panels keep your batteries fully charged?

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Nick Taylor - Green & White 1974 Hall GTC.
www.NicksGarage.com == www.HallGTC.com == www.NicksTeardrop.com

Yes. Voltage tops out @ 14.2 and bottoms at resting voltage of 13.2. It cycles constantly while the sun is available. I also have a very small panel keeping the starting battery charged that just plugs into the cig lighter.

I've never had luck with those dashboard panels. Maybe I should try again.

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Nick Taylor - Green & White 1974 Hall GTC.
www.NicksGarage.com == www.HallGTC.com == www.NicksTeardrop.com

i found some peel and stick panels that are quite nice and reasonable and powerful that just stick on the roof ..no drilling required and then maybe i could run the wires in through refrige vent stove vent or antanae holes...hook up inverter and transfer box and good to go...sounds lik a plan

If those are made by Unisolar, don't do it! The sticky-back glue is so aggressive that, even if you want to, you'll never get them off. I know. I worked for the US master distributor of the damned things and sold a lot of them (before they went out of business). The other thing is that the output wires are designed to be mounted under ridge caps on a standing seam metal roof and are prone to water intrusion. The other other thing is that the wire connections are on the front of the panel.

If you have your heart set on putting PV on the roof, get something crystaline, not amorphous. The Watts output per M/2 is about double.

there are several companies that make flexible panel kits...the unisolar is the peel and stick..(once u get em on there why would u want to take em off?) so i want them to stick and stay...and as far as they way they work the are high voltage panels so as long as they have the right controller and convertor/inverter should be good..also genealogy makes flexible ones that you glue or screw to the roof....and also there is pretty nice 200 watt portable kit that just hooks on to your batteries...although i want to have a little more power than that..

I'm going to be wearing my prof. solar designer hat here when I point out a few things about these systems...

First off, the battery capacity in a GTC is limited by the size of the battery box/tray to about 200 AH, if you get really creative and remove the factory boxes to give more room. I did this when I first got mine and installed a pair of VRLA 200 AH batteries I had removed from a big off-grid system. I had to reinforce the rocker panel to hold the weight and install them on their sides, which is the big advantage to VRLA and Gel-cell batteries. As usual, I used an excellent charge controller and did the whole thing as if I was getting paid for it. That's the good part.

The bad part is that VRLA and/or Gel-cell batteries have a different rate of charge and full SOC from standard FLA batteries. When you charge both the chassis and house batteries from the same source, in this case the engine alternator, you WILL ruin the house batteries in pretty short order because the SOC of the chassis battery is too high to be compatible. Remember that I've been doing hybrid PV systems for 34 years now, and I know best design practices well. I say all this because the batteries ALL need to be on the same page, not of mixed types (or ages). This means that, by necessity, you need to have FLA batteries running your coach, which means that they have to be mounted in the vertical position. This means that you are limited to the original battery makeup of about 105 AH, or a pair of T-105 Trojans, maybe smaller, because of vertical space limitations within the battery compartment.

You can maybe modify the battery tray by making a new box, but they already have done a pretty good job of design with what's there, without much leeway one way or the other. Having the batteries in a slide-out box is extremely desirable for servicing, so options are very limited.

Why all the blathering about batteries? Because installing a too-large PV array will be pointless when the batteries act as a limiter to the total system. You cannot install enough solar on the roof to power the house AC unit for more than a very short time, since to keep up with demand requires at LEAST 2,500 Watts @ 120 VAC. This is why you have a fuel-fired generator taking up all that space. For keeping up with the other AC loads, 150 to 200 Watts should be more than adequate to replenish the batteries in a reasonable time while parked in full sun (which you have to do for the system to work).

As far as the amorphous silicon flexible modules go, the old rule of thumb is that they are about 33% as efficient per M/sq as an average crystaline module. If these guys have finally found a way to beat the laws of physics, that's great, but I would certainly avoid mounting them permanently to the roof of your GTC, since all things made by man have a nasty habit of failing at some point. Then you have to somehow remove something that's going to result in a real problem with the gelcoat in the process.

OK, lecture over.

oki got it...my desire for solar was to put about a 400 watt system with inverter and junction box and a controller so i can run my outlets from the solar power ..i agree that the solar power really cant be used for the ac...but everything else should perform adequately...there is also a portable kit that just attaches to the batteries and its 200 watts ..this would solve problem of roof mount
http://www.solardealz.com/Zamp-Solar-20 ... s-200p.htm i left a link on this..with all your experience id like to hear your opinion on this little systemhttp://www.amazon.com/gp/product/ ... 12NFSGWZNR
and a link for the crystalline flexible solar panels

btw...i know they make a device that can charge only the house batteries and not the alternater battery ...

Can't get the links to link, but I think I have the general idea..

IMHO, the flexible amorphous modules with the holes on the corners seems like a nifty approach because you can put them up when camping and not have to leave em out all the time.

The output from the solar would go through a properly sized fuse to a charge controller in the battery room, then to just the coach batteries. You don't charge the chassis battery at all because of the battery isolator, which is why I use one of those crummy little portable modules that plugs in via a lighter socket. It works great!

Always keep in mind that if you aren't paying in the neighborhood of a Buck Fifty to Two per rated Watt output of the modules, you're paying too much. Controllers are also a real bargain these days, but be sure to include an inline fuse.