4 Essential Components to Charge my RV Batteries with Solar

Welcome to another Todd’s Two Minute Tech Tip Tuesday, brought to you by the National RV Training Academy. 

Here are the 4 items you need to hook up your battery to your solar panel: 

Solar panels

Now, they don’t send the voltage down to your battery. Solar panels are designed to catch a maximum amount of voltage depending on sun strike but that voltage varies, so you can buy whatever size solar panel you want. They’re all rated but some panels may produce 20 volts, 30 volts, 40 volts, and so on. We all know that voltage is way too high to charge a 12 volt battery so the second item we need is a…

Solar Controller

It’s kind of like your converter. It take 120 volts and steps it down to 12. These MPPTs (maximum powerpoint tracking) take that random voltage that’s coming from the solar panel and produce battery voltage. 

DC Breaker

In between the 2 you need some type of disconnect to turn off the power coming down from the solar panels because you don’t want that high voltage coming down from the sun and hitting you. 

Batteries 

Finally, you want to go ahead and add it to your battery so you can charge it up. So you want to take it from the output of your solar controller over to the battery. 

Watch the video for some additional tips!

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