Newbie RV/solar questions

[Richard86]

Hi everybody!

New on the forum and new to mobilehome life since we bought an A-class Fiat Ducato 2.8 Mirage Alaska 5000 a month ago. Our family situation is me, wifey, daughter 15 and son 8 and a dog. We live in Norway so it's a complete waste to be hooked up from campsite to campsite, and sice we're the outdoorsy types, we want to go free camping (unplugged) for the weekends.

Our RV is standard equiped with 1 polycrystal solar panel (i believe 200 watts) and has a 100 Ah marinelife battery.

While going through the electrical schemes i found out that the battery gets charged by either being hooked up (230v), driving (generator/alternator) or solar panel. I think i found the battery charger and its a 10A charger. After that everything is connected to some form of power supply, wich is located in the a seperate compartment with the battery

My plan is replace this 100AH batter with an Sonnak ES2400 Exide 210 Ah GEL battery and replace or add 1 poly kristal (160wp) solarpanel. Add an inverter so we have 230v while off-the-grid.

Question 1: Can i just replace the 100Ah marinelife battery by a 210Ah GEL battery? Apart from new solar panel/ charger, will it still charge while driving? Will it affect the charging of the car battery?

Question 2: Can i hook up the older 200 watts solarpanel parallel with a newer 160 wp (notice the difference in watts and watt-peak) With new CTEK Multi MXS 25A charger? I would like to have 2 solar panels.

Question 3: If i hook up an inverter 12v to 230v to the battery, can i use both 12v and 230v from the same battery at the same time?

Question 4: Is it easier to create a 2nd circuit with new solarpanel/charger and new battery, and hook it up by a switch to the RV's electrical system (lights, fans, etc.)?

Ill add some pictures with this to make stuff easier. Ofcourse its in italian :/ to make it harder again

Thanks in advance guys!

Greets Richard

 

[funflair]

Hi Richard

I will try some answers,

You should be OK replacing the 100ah with the ES2400 GEL, subject to it fitting the space of course, but the built in charger at 10amps would be a little underpowered for charging that battery back up, I believe at least 10% of the battery ah is recommended, but of course with plenty of solar this would be helping as well, BUT you will need to check that both the solar and the regular 240v battery charger have a setting for GEL as they charge differently to standard lead acid, your starter battery charging would not be affected.

Yes add more solar for sure but from the schematic it looks like the regulator you have at the moment is built into your electrical system so 1/ may not be the best and may not have GEL setting and 2/ it may not handle two solar panels so it may be worth thinking about a dedicated MPPT regulator with GEL setting for each panel as they may have different characteristics, the regulators would then connect straight to your battery so if you have a display of total ah and amps in/out this might not work right.

If you add an inverter you will be able to make 240v and use 12v from the same battery but be careful as using 240v can take a lot from your battery if you are not aware.

OK that's me done for now other than to say welcome to the forum and if you are going to get the best from your time on here you are going to need to subscribe and become a full member only £15 per year and good value in my opinion.

Martin