Travel trailer battery?

Brianinsocal

After signing up for this forum yesterday and getting great info from the mods. I am now hooked and could not sleep last night thinking of ways to use solar power in my house!!

Since now I have a poly panel that I will not use with my other setup I was wondering about hooking it up to my travel trailer.


I have two Interstate 12 v deep cycle marine/rv batteries on the front of my travel trailer. I have a 100 watt panel and a 10 watt solar controller. The batteries are hooked up in Parallel. Can someone tell me how to hook up the charger to this configuration? Does it go just on one battery or do I have to wire it to both? Do I need a duo battery controller?

Thanks,
Brian

Cariboocoot

Re: Travel trailer battery?

If the batteries are wired in parallel they will act as one battery. Ideally they will be wired 'diagonally' as per this diagram.

Cariboocoot

Re: Travel trailer battery?

You have to interpret that as two individual 12 Volt batteries in parallel instead of two strings of 6 Volts. Also only certain Morningstar controllers have battery sense wires. If I drew individual diagrams for every possible scenario I'd be doing nothing but drawings!

Brianinsocal

Re: Travel trailer battery?

Cariboocoot wrote: »

If I drew individual diagrams for every possible scenario I'd be doing nothing but drawings!

No doubt on that. I do appreciate the drawing you posted. It has given me some useful information.

Thanks

ILFE

Re: Travel trailer battery?

Brianinsocal wrote: »

I have two Interstate 12 v deep cycle marine/rv batteries on the front of my travel trailer. I have a 100 watt panel and a 10 watt solar controller. The batteries are hooked up in Parallel. Can someone tell me how to hook up the charger to this configuration? Does it go just on one battery or do I have to wire it to both? Do I need a duo battery controller?

Brian,

I think you meant you have a 10 amp solar controller?

Anyway, here are two drawings I did regarding my two arrays. You can see that, on the larger array, I added the battery sense wires. But, to be honest, they were not really necessary due to the short the distance between the controller and the batteries.

Brianinsocal

Re: Travel trailer battery?

ILFE,

Yes you are correct, I did mean 10 amp. Thank you for the great drawings. I am going to print them out so I can refer to them while I do my set up. These will definitely come in handy.

Thanks again,
Brian