Ka'a Nui - Mana (solar power and house batteries charging)

Ka'a Nui Solar power


Ka'a Nui has about 700 watts of 12-volt power on the roof.  How best to use and implement is what this blog will be about.

Six panels of three different types make up the 700 watts, 2-50 watts at the rear of the van, 2- 100 watts at the front and I think 2- 190 watts panels in the center of the van roof.  .

Currently, only 1 panel is being used, and looks like the others are set in series.  

Issues to consider...
  • Can I install and ship lithium batteries?  Not sure yet, having reached out to both Pasha and Matson, it is hard to tell what our options are.
  • Run the 700w as two 350w strings, or three strings, each with a controller to the battery.  I'm thinking in this direction and could mean more wire, but we can keep the AWG wire size down, and have redundancy.  Also depending on how different size panels are connected, you can end up with a ton of loss to the batteries
  • How large of a house battery and what type, GMA or Lithium?.
  • Install a DC-DC charger from the high-output HD 320a alternator to the battery should be installed.
  • Wire runs on the roof need to be cleaned up, and not be on the roof flapping in the wind.
Looking like the best option is as follows
  • 2-200W panels to a DC2DC converter, also adds into it the input from the high output alternator as a charger. This will connect to a bus bar and to the house battery(s). This would include battery temperature monitoring and Bluetooth status.  In addition, this will charge the main van battery as a float, bonus win
    • DCC50S 12V 50A DC-DC On-Board Battery Charger with MPPT.
  • 2-50W, in series, then add in parallel the 2-100W panels.Run into a separate charge controller to the bus bar
    • Renogy Rover 40 Amp 12V/24V DC Input MPPT Solar Charge Controller
  • 2K inverter
    • Renogy 2000W Pure Sine Wave Inverter
  • Myriad number of fuses, switches and isolators andmore fuses and switches.
  • Batteries, for now, a single GMA H8 battery, but leave room (build) for 2-200 or 300ah batteries.
  • Convert all wires from solar to 8awg.

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