Most of you are probably looking for the “RV Battery Charging Puzzle”.  This is also good basic education for anyone who wants to go off grid in a cabin or small home.  My email address is shown there, but please don’t contact me with questions unless you have read the Puzzle.  You don’t have to read my rants under “The History”, but it explains how I ended up where I am today and gives some examples of recent solar system evaluations that demonstrate very well just how little has changed.  There are now a couple of RV Solar dealers doing working systems but  I will not recommend anybody yet.  Both of those companies will sell you nothing but MPPT, even when it does not make monetary sense on small RV systems.  MPPT does make sense on large systems only when you spend enough to get something like a Morningstar Tristar MPPT controller.   These dealers’ advertising make it very clear that they are not “low budget” installers. Many people think that when they see advertising that shows huge over built systems on the roofs of RV’s they are seeing proof that the company knows what they are doing. I believe that it proves just the opposite and that it is a bold statement about their real mission statement (to generate as much profit as they can).  They also still tend to fall down on the job on things that I find unforgivable, like the missing wiring protection on one system that I reported on, the constant overloading of controllers, the continuing refusal to install big enough wiring for MPPT to really have a chance at working and the denial of how important temperature compensation is.  I’ll post it here first if this ever changes.  You should note that Morningstar believes so much in the value of temperature compensation that it is included at no extra cost on all of their small RV controllers.   They also include the remote temperature probe in  the box when you buy their new Tristar MPPT controller.

I constantly see people attributing statements to me that I never made. For instance, I have never said that nobody needs a generator. I did say that WE don’t need one. Our back-up charger is our noisy Ford 7.3L truck & booster cables. It has only been used four times in over six years and one of those times was because of a failed solar panel.