Today I spent most of the day revamping the solar power system in my bus. This morning I disconnected the batteries, and pulled most of the equipment out. My plan is to move all the equipment to the center of the bus. This will shorten the wire run from the panels to the batteries, and place the equipment in an area that is under-utilized, freeing up space in the front of the bus. I started out with a box I salvaged from work when our fire system was updated.

I cut holes in the box for fuses, circuit breakers, charge controllers, switches, and data logger. Then I sanded the red finish and repainted with a cream color. I’ve run out of day to finish, but it should be in early this week. I have to run off the electric grid until I get it finished, so that’s my inspiration. Here’s a view of the new box:

The new panel has 2 Prostar 30M PWM charge controllers with load control, a TriMetric 2020 battery/system monitor, 6 Condura rocker type switches to control fans, lights, etc., and 4 25A circuit breakers for solar and load protection. The shunt for the TriMetric will mount down near the batteries, along with a 125A fuse and the 1500 Xantrex XPower inverter. At some point I’ll get a Samlex True sine wave inverter to run more sensitive equipment like battery chargers.