The power rebuild

So what’s been happing at the 5er?

Well we finally found out why our solar system has been so sporadic in operation. After the original install all seemed to work as expected until we boon docked in one of the lower 48 states on the way to AZ. At that time after traveling all day in bright sunny skies I was disappointed to find that my batteries were only about 3/4 charged. 

Once we got to our present location I have been working on a lot of other things getting the 5er updated and doing needed repairs “propane system comes to mind”. Well now that I have had some spare time and am still getting mixed results with the solar I meant to look closer into the issue.

So the other day after listening to my bride voice her opinion about the cost of electricity here at the RV Resort I started to switch the 5er over to straight solar when Poof, the hole system went down. Lost all power to everything. Now I can tell you this even during a bright sunny day in Yuma when the power goes out in the old 5er, things get earie quite quickly and the shadows set in. Wowwwwwwww!

Ok so I start to look at what might be the cause of our lack of power making the usual checks for voltage and fuse condition. Nothing! Power to the manual transfer switch I built? Nope! What the heck, checked at the shut off and still no 12 volt power. Not even any voltage coming from the solar panels, this is nuts!!!!

Now I check at the outside terminal of the battery bank box, this is virtually checking at the battery and still nothing but some residual voltage. So I remove the battery ventilation system and cover to the battery bank then after deciphering the wiring “first 6 volt in series and then 12 volt parallel” I begin testing voltage at each battery. Bang 6 plus volts at each battery leaving me only with the cabling to be tested. One less than slight pull on the positive cables revealed they were in fact intact but after reaching further down sparks started emitting from the negative cables.

Not that this is how you want to find a problem but at lease now I was getting somewhere. After removing the cabling from the hot side of the battery bank I could get a better view as to what was happening on the ground side of the system.

Well adding to an already long story I had the two main ground cables come loose at their main connection thru the battery bank container causing intermittent contact which eventually burned off the ends on both 6 gauge wires.

Replacing the cables and redoing the method of passage thru the battery bank container netted a vast improvement in solar output which solved my dilemma.

So moral of this story is “It’s always an adventure”

Mark