Gear that worked!!!

Code Red

Adventurist
I have been electrically challenged in the past, and was overjoyed to come back from Expo-East with positive experience. Most of the camping I do involves frequent movement, so the batteries get a regular does of alternator to keep everything charged. I was a little concerned about how we would do at Expo East with a static camp for three days.

What we took:

(1) National Luna Weekender 52 - I bought this in Dubai and was disappointed with the power consumption, but there were both electrical (dodgy battery) and environmental (high temps) concerns there that I hoped would no longer be a problem.

(2) National Luna Power Pack (battery box) with a Duracell Group 31 FLA deep cycle battery (105 AH), and a Victron BM700 battery monitor. (counts amps in and out). Bluetooth dongle.

(3) Overland Solar Ranger foldable 120W solar panel.

The weather was bad for solar on Thursday-Friday, but sunny on Saturday and Sunday. I attempted to deploy the panel on Saturday, and couldn't get it to work. But I knew Overland Solar was supposed to have a booth at Expo. I found them (thanks to directions from the AAV tent) and they diagnosed a bad cable from the panel to the controller and had me back up in no time. I got about 2 hrs of charging Saturday afternoon. That put about 9 AH back into the battery even with the fridge running.

The Victron meter tells me I only consumed about 35 AH between Thursday afternoon and Saturday afternoon. This is a lot less than I expected, but the weather was very cool, and temps were below the settings on the fridge for several hours Friday and Saturday nights.

Sunday dawned icy but sunny. The panel was in the shade where I had hung it on the tent, so I just laid it flat on the ground in the sun. The meter said the battery was down about 26 AH, almost exactly where it was when the sun went down and the temperature dropped the night before. We took some classes Sunday morning, and by the time we got back to the tent at noon, the meter said the battery was topped up.

So we camped for 3.5 days and had little or no charging for 2.5 of those. The battery bank never got below 70% and was fully charged when we left. I think in warm weather we probably would have at least doubled the consumption if not more, but the panel worked well enough that even a little sunshine would have kept us is good shape.

The Victron meter was expensive and the install was a jury rig just for this trip. That said, I felt much more confident in a meter counting AH in and out than I did with the CTEK monitor I had been using previously that just measures volts, temp, and then adjusts using a magic 8-ball. The blue tooth worked flawlessly and I now have a much better idea of both the state of charge and the load I am putting on the battery. (fridge was pulling 2.4 amps when running) It cost too much, but being able to see what was going on gave me a lot of peace of mind when trying out a new setup.

Not exactly a ground breaking story, but this was my first attempt at powering something that long without running the vehicle, and my first time using solar. I was very pleased, and a little surprised, that everything worked out as well as it did.
 
Tell us more about the Victron meter. Sounds like a good peace of mind product as I’m usually a bit baffled by the status of my battery when running solar in camp.
 
Tell us more about the Victron meter. Sounds like a good peace of mind product as I’m usually a bit baffled by the status of my battery when running solar in camp.

x2 :coffee
 
Ill chime in, Victron BMV-700 Is what I use, 500amp shunt goes inline with the negative. This allows all loads to be metered.

There is also the 712 now, which just has built in bluetooth.

https://www.victronenergy.com/battery-monitors

Its great, fully charge the bank, connect meter, tell it what size bank you have (any some other things if you want, battery type, DoD desired etc) and you get a percentage of battery bank. It meters in and outflow. Shows instantaneous amp draw, max, min etc. Not cheap, but man does it work so nicely. I have the desire to go Victron all things....
 
This past spring I added the Victron Smart Solar MPPT 75/10 controller to my Overland Solar 120 watt folding panels. After seeing Gabe's shunt/solar set up last year I knew I wanted to go this route. Way better than the PWM solar controller that came with the Overland Solar set up.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B075NTT8GH/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o05_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

https://www.victronenergy.com/solar-charge-controllers/mppt7510

Used silicone to glue it to the back of the panel like Overland Solar did with the original PWM controller.
 
The Victron meter was great. It took a lot of guess work out of how things were performing and how much battery I had left.

As mentioned above, you tell it how big your battery bank is, and sync it at fully charged, then it just counts amp in and out. It will also give you instant State-of-Charge, volts, amps in/out, and watts in/out, AH consumed this cycle, ..... It will accept a bluetooth dongle that works seamlessly with a Victron App so you can get all of that and a 30-day history without leaving your chair. They offer another model with the bluetooth built in, but it allegedly has much shorter range than the setup with the separate dongle.

The risk seems to be that if your battery is labelled for more/less AH than it really has, or if its not fully charged when you sync it, then your SOC might be off a little, but it will still count AH in and out, so you will know how far down you are, and when you have replaced what you used.

The instant amps in/out let you know how much (net) the panel is putting in the battery. So you can see if its charging, and when its not, you can see the instant load for your gadgets. For example, the meter confirmed the internet rumors that my fridge draws about 2.4 amps when its running, and should also be able to give me some feedback on how I am positioning the solar panel etc....

The Victron solar controllers have the same bluetooth options. They offer one line that has the blue-tooth built-in (Smartsolar) and one line that will accept the dongle (Bluesolar). Both will provide an mppt controller that will support an app with similar information on the function of the panels,allow you to set charge profiles for the solar controllers, etc... and both are cheaper than the meters. The difference is that they are panel-centric, so they won't show you the load on the battery. I think they will count AH in from the panel, but as they are not in series with the load, I don't think they can tell you what the battery has used, or what its SOC is.

As Washington Taco mentions above, the MPPT controllers like the Victron are also supposed to be much more efficient (internet rumors abound, but I have heard 15-30%) than the PWM controllers that Overland Solar includes with their kit. I overheard the Overland Solar guys discussing that point with a customer while they were testing my stuff. They said that the choice to go with the controller they did was because of durability and weather resistance. He said it was better in the rain and you could run over it without hurting it. Take that with a grain of salt, but the controller does seem pretty robust.

At this point the 120 watt panel is giving me more than I need with that controller. If warmer weather causes the fridge to run more and change that equation, then I would probably try a Victron controller before adding the bulk/expense of a second panel.

The foldable panel I got is a great form factor. I could carry it in a seat-back pocket or stuff it between the center console and the passenger seat and forget it was there. I was looking for the suitcase type when I contacted Overland Solar. But I told him what I intended to run with it and how I intended to use it (multiple vehicles including a CJ5 and CJ7) and he talked me out of the suitcase in favor of this one. He also matched all the connections to the battery box, etc.
 
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I picked up one of the 120 watt foldable panels as well. What peaked my interest other than how compact it is is that these new cells can pick up the suns energy at a lower angle to the panel and in the course of a full day will acquire more energy.
 
Update:

We try to go to Africa every year for a self drive. The quality of the trucks is generally very good, (Bushlore and Avis rentals), but we have learned what to take to make them a little better (tools, better first aid, additional 12v outlets, tire gauges, etc...). One area we haven't been able to do much about is that the house battery and assorted systems are usually pretty beat up. We often have to run the truck to charge the battery when we would rather be enjoying sundowners. (I know, what a great problem to have right?)

This year I put the Overland Solar 120 watt foldable panel in my suitcase and took it with me because nobody wants warm beer or the sound of the truck running when yo're in camp.

Here are a few points I took away from using it for about a week in the Kalahari desert. (i.e. plenty of sunshine, no clouds, etc...)

- Everything worked out great. This was the first trip in five years where we did not have any electrical issues.

- The foldable nature of the panel is both a positive and a negative. It would have been impossible to take it without this feature, but it made setup challenging when you wanted to keep the truck in the shade and angle the panel.

- Angling the panel to the sun is key. Depending on time of day, getting the panel off the flat ground and angling it between 45-90 degrees made a huge difference in the power it was providing. This is obviously more critical near sunrise and sunset, but, based on how we travel, that's usually when we had it deployed. I noticed power output anywhere from 30-250% better when the panel was angled up and pointed in the direction of the sun (as opposed to flat on the ground or the hood).

- The panel folds like a map or a bi-fold closet door. The foldable nature of the panel makes it hard to angle. The panel is not rigid, and so you can't just prop up one side in one place. You need to support the top edge to keep it stretched out. This is easy if you have something to hang it from, and harder if you have to prop it up. I didn't have a good way to do that, and as a result, I would end up with some sections a little cockeyed and not aimed in the right direction. I expect a collapsible frame out of those shock-corded tent poles or something similar would make a significant difference. The best result I got with it was hanging it off the side of the truck, but we only did that once because we tried to keep the truck in the shade.

- I wish I had a longer extension cable. The cable that Overland Solar gave me at Expo East last year fixed my problem, but was shorter than the original. It was a challenge to keep the truck in the shade and the panel in the sun with the length I have. (25 feet +/-) The amps being sent to the battery are low enough that I can afford much more length while staying with a reasonable wire size.

- Different Controller - I swapped out the controller that came with the panel for a Victron one that allows me to monitor it via blue tooth. After a little research, I am not convinced that the advantages of MPPT will really show up on a single panel system of this voltage, but Victron's blue-tooth monitoring is great, particularly if you don't know what you're doing. I wanted to be able tell if, and how well, it was working. That said, the Victron controller is not as robust as the one provided by Overland Solar. At one point the monitoring saved me because the wires were pulling out on the controller and I didn't see it. The stock controller would not have alerted me to this problem, but I don't think it would have had this problem in the first place. On the other hand, the stock controller would not have given me the feedback I needed to figure out how to best set up/orient the panel. Once you know how this feedback is probably unnecessary, but I am a novice, and still figuring this out. If you know what you're doing, then the stock controller is probably the better choice. I'll keep the Victron on it, but will add some strain relief to the wiring.

- Performance - The best I saw was 6.5 amps going to the battery, the average was 2.5-4.5. Most of the use was morning or late afternoon. I think that was great considering that we were generally moving during the day, and so missed the peak periods of sunlight. At one point I noticed it was putting in about 0.9 amps while the whole panel was in the dappled shade of a tree. The Engel fridge probably pulls about 1-2 amps. I did not have a reliable means of measuring the battery's state of charge, but the amperages I was putting in were low enough that I am assuming I was getting use of all the panel would produce. (i.e. bulk charge without significant internal resistance from the battery as it approaches full). I was almost always putting in more than the fridge was pulling out.
 
I too have rented from Bushlore several times, the most recently on a trip through Namibia last month.
We picked up the “car” in Windhoek and it was a 2019 model with only one rental under its belt. It was obviously in very good shape.
The truck had dual batteries and we never had an issue keeping out beer ( or in our case gin and tonics) ice cold.
We did drive every day so our way of exploring may be different from yours..
 
I too have rented from Bushlore several times, the most recently on a trip through Namibia last month.
We picked up the “car” in Windhoek and it was a 2019 model with only one rental under its belt. It was obviously in very good shape.
The truck had dual batteries and we never had an issue keeping out beer ( or in our case gin and tonics) ice cold.
We did drive every day so our way of exploring may be different from yours..

Please don't take this as a dig on Bushlore. We've had pretty good luck with them, and will continue to rent from them. But no matter how hard they try, I suspect many of their clients don't know (or care) how far down they run the aux batteries.

Those trucks live a hard life.

 
Please don't take this as a dig on Bushlore. We've had pretty good luck with them, and will continue to rent from them. But no matter how hard they try, I suspect many of their clients don't know (or care) how far down they run the aux batteries.

Those trucks live a hard life.



Thanks for sharing the video! We are heading to Namibia in September!
 
Trust me, the adage of “drive it like you stole it” is very appropriate in the rental market and even more so in the African bush..
If you can get one with less than 30,000 km you probably won’t have any issues...
 

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