Our biggest RV modification yet: We got solar!

Living and working on the road, we're always making sure we have reliable and consistent means of living, and before we set out, I put a lot of research into setting us up for success. We need the three main pillars for RV living: water, electricity, and waste disposal. In addition, we need internet so we can work from the road. Sometimes research can only get us so far. In RV life, things fail. Last year, we had to replace our water pump and freshwater tank. We also began with a totally different internet setup than we have now, as we continue upgrading it as new technologies are developed.

Now, in our second year of full-time RVing, we are moving full-speed ahead in making us even more connected, no matter where our travels take us.

I’ve wanted rooftop solar since long before I ever thought about RVing. In a house, getting solar is about sustainability and lowering your electric bill. At campgrounds, there is no electric bill unless you’re staying put for a month or more, and our environmental impact is way lower than it was in a house, even with the extra gas we use for driving. So what are the perks of getting solar? Truth is, it's not for everyone, but as we spent month after month on the road, we learned how we like to camp. For the most part, we don’t like RV resorts and prefer to stay in more rustic campgrounds, like state or national parks. You'll notice the difference just in our trip down from Massachusetts to the Carolinas this year compared to last year. Last year, the trip included 4 campgrounds, 3 of which were RV parks. This year, we stayed at 5 campgrounds, and 0 were RV parks. What changed? First, we learned how to maneuver our trailer better, and so we got comfortable getting into tougher spots. Typically RV parks have easier and more level sites to get into than more rustic parks. We also learned the inside of our trailer better. State, county, and federal park campgrounds often have limited or no hookups. We've learned how to conserve our water and waste tank space, and run off batteries and our generator for power. We've come to the realization that we'd rather be in nature with less hookups, than in a crowded RV resort with full hookups. And we realized this despite only going as far west as Indiana last year. The eastern side of the US doesn't offer as much camping freedom as the west, and this year we were venturing into unknown territory, into areas where there are many more options for free and nearly free camping. The catch? You need to be entirely self-contained. Sure, we can run our generator, but not 24/7 due to noise and gas-guzzling. Though we hadn't been out west yet, our experience RVing last year gave us an inkling that we'd want to try our hand at being even more remote when given the chance. We had a general plan for 2023, and much of that plan was not booking constant campsites. We could give ourselves the freedom to find public land, pull into it, and experience true dispersed camping for the first time. We decided it was time to upgrade our power system and get solar.

These days most RVs come prepped for solar, or with some solar panels to keep the batteries topped off, but these tend to be small, dinky systems that aren’t enough for full-timers working from the road. While some extra knowledgeable and handy RVers install their own solar, we needed a professional, expert installer, and for our trailer there was one clear choice: it was time to make an appointment to see the doctor. In the ATC world, Boondoctor John has been the expert for electrical modifications and solar installations for years, and for good reason. He knows the systems in ATC trailers inside and out, and he's diligent, organized, and determined to give every client a system that works well and meets their needs. He proved that expertise right away. As soon as we arrived to the Boondoctor Ranch, he walked around the outside of our RV and pointed out three things totally unrelated to solar, that we’d never noticed, that he thought we should get someone to look at. Already our appointment to get solar was shaping up to be the first step in a process to more repairs and modifications that will make our trailer the best home-on-wheels for us.

Pulling up to the ranch also cemented just how much of a staple John is in the community of ATC Aluminum Toyhauler owners. We're a small, niche sector of the RV world, choosing to purchase these still relatively unknown rigs over the more popular models. We felt like we were entering a little ATC mecca, parking our trailer among not just John's ATC, but 5 others as well.

In the days leading up to our solar install, we took a lot of time figuring out the best configuration for us. In our case, we wanted to be able to live and work fully off grid for 1-2 weeks at a time without having to run the generator for more than a few hours a couple of times. First things first, we needed new batteries. Often people will ask if such-and-such can or cannot be run “on solar," but that's not really the right question. In an RV, the solar energy doesn't power "stuff," but it charges your batteries, and then the batteries provide power to everything else. Most RVs are sold with regular lead acid batteries, but we upgraded ours to lithium ion before we even took delivery of it. Even so, with this solar installation we were replacing those two lithium batteries with four new ones. Each is a 200Ah (amp hour) 12 volt battery, which together, fully charged, can store about 10kWh of energy. That’s 2-3x what we use in a typical, temperate day, and enough to get us through all but the most extreme hot and cold days.

Second, we needed to be able to use that power. In an RV there are two different electrical systems. There’s a 12V DC system, which directly runs the RV-specific equipment: lights, fans, fridge, water pump, water heater, and water tank heaters. Our RV also has USB outlets that run off this system. Everything that’s more power hungry, like the microwave and air conditioning, and everything that you would plug into a regular outlet, needs 120V AC power. That can come from the grid if we're plugged into a pedestal at a campground, or from a generator, like the one we have on board that came with our ATC. But, to get AC power from batteries, you need an inverter. Our ATC came with an inverter, but it had limited power output and disappointingly supplied only a few very inconvenient outlets, like outlets on the ceiling that we hardly ever use. For our upgrade we got a Victron smart 3000W hybrid inverter/charger, and it’s the centerpiece of the whole solar power system. 3000W is how much AC power it can generate from the DC power it draws from our batteries. That’s enough to simultaneously run 2 major appliances at once (think an air conditioner and the microwave or other kitchen appliance, or a space heater) plus a few small items like our laptops. “Hybrid” means it’s smart enough to work in parallel with the grid or our generator and match its output to their frequency and voltage. In other words, we're able to use our solar energy and electrical energy if both are available and the plug-in electric can't supply as much as we need. For example, until now when we were at a campground with 30A hookups, that meant we could only draw 3600W - again, enough to run two appliances at once. But now, with our new inverter, if we had 30A hookups, we could draw 3600W from the grid *plus* 3000W from the batteries, enough to run our whole RV. The same inverter also acts as our battery charger, so whenever we’re using less than that maximum amount of power, it has a converter that takes the excess and uses it to charge our batteries. Since our goal of course is to be powered by the sun, we also have a solar charge controller that takes the power from solar panels and changes it to 12V power.

Boondoctor John took close to a full day installing the batteries and inverter. We spent 8 hours with no power, which we had never done in our RV before. You probably noticed from the few times we've lost power, that when we do, we still have lights and some outlets. That's because we still had our batteries, which supplied our lights and USB outlets, and the inconvenient outlets powered by our inverter. That's how we were still able to broadcast live on our travelversary despite the power being out at the RV park where we were. But now our batteries and inverter were getting replaced. So that meant no lights, no heat/AC, no appliances, no way to charge our phones, and even no way to run our water pump to flush our toilet! But the day of sacrifice was well worth it because once those upgrades were in, it was an immediate game changer. It used to be that if we weren’t plugged in, we’d have to start the generator just to heat up something in the microwave for 15 seconds. Now we could do all that, cook our own meals, and run the whole trailer for several days with no power source at all. John made sure to fully charge our batteries before installing them, so even though we didn't have our solar panels yet, we were still able to use the system. That night, we got a real sense of the freedom we could have without relying on plugging in or starting our generator. It was very exciting.

On the second day of the install, it rained. Not great for walking around on the roof or cutting holes for wires! So, John used it to run some wires inside and install an LCD monitoring system that lets us keep track of how everything is working. It shows how much charge our batteries have, how much we’re using for both DC and AC, and how much we’re getting from both solar and shore power or generator. It can also send that data back to John if we ever need help diagnosing and fixing problems down the line.

Because the day's work would involve John coming into and out of the trailer, we stayed out of the way and took the pets to explore Quartzite, a major RVing Mecca just a half hour away. Quartzite is known for its ample dispersed camping spots on public land, so we drove around exploring the possibilities that we'd have once our solar install was complete. It's a whole new way of camping that we're not at all used to. The lands are marked and have signs with rules, instructions, and fees (if there are any), and you just pull in, register if it's required, and then find a spot to park. If dispersed camping isn't your thing, Quartzite also has several RV parks where you can enjoy full hookups and amenities. No matter what style of camping floats your boat, you'll be surrounded by the Arizona mountains and welcomed by like-minded RVers who are enjoying their camping adventures.

The rain subsided, leaving day 3 clear for installing the star of the system: the solar panels themselves. Months before the install, I spent a lot of time with power meters and spreadsheets calculating how much power we use on an average day, estimating how much power we could expect out of different numbers of solar panels, factoring in where we like to RV, and thinking about how often we'd be OK running our generator to supplement the solar and top off the batteries. Because we're not always in the desert and do travel to and from the forested Northeast, I was initially leaning towards a conservative estimate of 1400W, but both Boondoctor John and Nicole talked me down. With our batteries, inverter, and generator backup, we would be in good shape with less. We decided to install 3 350W panels, for 1050W total. John uses residential solar panels, which are cheaper, more efficient, higher voltage, and more durable than panels designed for RVs. He also put in an extra circuit in case we want to add more panels in the future.

And that was all it took! Months of planning, brainstorming, calculating, and consulting with John, and then in just 3 days, our trailer was outfitted for off-grid camping greatness.

But alas, things are never so simple when it comes to big projects such as this. From day one, we noticed that whenever we were using AC power from the inverter, our lights would flicker, unless they were all the way at maximum brightness. We have LED lights that came installed on our ceiling, and each have dimmers. We seldom keep our lights on the highest level of brightness, and so we noticed this pulse-like flicker immediately. We weren't sure at first if this was an issue with our rig alone. After all, we have had problems in the past that could have affected our electricity in mysterious ways. According to John, this was a problem seemingly no one had ever had before, across hundreds of solar installs! John, Nicole, and I spent hours brainstorming possible causes and testing what made it better or worse, without much success. As it turned out though, it wasn’t a new problem at all. John, who usually keeps his lights on the brightest setting, decided to dim his lights, plug in an appliance, and see what happened. Lo and behold, he had the flickering too! We figured out that it was some weird quirk where the inverter caused the battery voltage to fluctuate just a tiny bit, and the LEDs and dimmers ATC uses were sensitive to it. So does that mean of all the ATC owners who have this inverter, we're the only ones that dim our lights and therefore discovered this quirk? Fascinating. Now that we narrowed down the problem, we contemplated solutions. We thought we were going to have to buy and install 5 higher quality dimmers ourselves, but the night before we left, John was able to find and install a component that took the power from the battery and stabilized it at a constant voltage, and that fixed it. We're really thankful that now we can have our mood lighting whenever we wish, without turning our trailer into a disco every time we cook.

And so, as solar novices, armed with a nearly-untested new electrical system, it was time to carefully and gradually ease our way into this new way of camping, to take our time learning our rig’s new limits...

...Just kidding. We've been waiting for this moment for months, and now it's time to take this baby on the road! 3 full weeks in a row with no hookups! Let the freedom begin.