Micro Minnie FLX solar and battery

[lgudema]

We have a new Micro Minnie FLX. It is promoted that you can be off grid for 4 or 5 days, but we haven't found the system to be up to that level.

We don't use most of the highly efficient appliances, like the AC, microwave, TV, etc. Mostly we're using the GE fridge and lights (which draw almost no power); and we use an electric kettle for a few minute in the morning. We've only used the AC when connected to shore power.

Nonetheless, we use up about 30-40% or more of the stored battery power (320 AH battery) in a day. Maybe 10% is replenished if it's very bright and we're not under trees the next day. So each day the stored power is declining significantly, and after three days or so we're very low. If it's cloudy/rainy, this happens much faster.

And shouldn't the battery get a boost from the 7 pin plug? When we're driving, it doesn't seem to make a lot of difference.

Should the system be using that much power just to run the fridge? And produce so little power from the 380 watts of solar panels? If we used most of the appliances, we'd really be SOL.

And we're having another problem with the battery: it clicks off without apparent cause or warning at random times independent of temperature, how much it's charged, what we're drawing at the moment, etc. All we have to do to restart it is press the button. But obviously it shouldn't be clicking off at all.

I'd appreciate any insights. Thanks!

[mfouts]

You might check this thread out. A lot of great info from some knowledable contributors.
There are setting within some of your contollers that may help.
https://www.winnieowners.com/forums/...rs-363804.html

[lgudema]

Thanks for the link - I'll check it out!

[GRI]

Im in the same boat. very disappointed in the recharge.
I also feel that winnebago should have put a dual power fridge like other campers, to give you the possibility of powering your fridge off of propane.
with just the fridge running and a couple of lights every once in a while it uses more power than it could recharge via solar panel.

Ill read the link above and see if it will help

[Marine359]

There’s just no way you should be using 30-40% of your 320ah battery each day. That’s well over 100ah/day, a whole lot. We don’t have the GE fridge. We have the Dometic compressor fridge. But either fridge should have approximately the same daily consumption. After almost 3 years with ours, we definitely know we average 50ah/day. A bit more when it’s really hot outside, and a bit less when it’s cool. With the fridge being the cornerstone of our electrical system, we just plan around it, and make sure it’s programmed for optimal performance. Cooling it down in performance mode, then switching to eco mode gives the best performance profile.

In decent sun, our 300w roof array produces about 900wh per day in winter, and well over 1Kw in summer. In any case, that’s way more going into the battery than the fridge is taking out. So, unless you’re blowing through a lot of energy consumption on other stuff, you should be able to go for several days with moderate sun. We also carry a 110w portable to supplement if needed. Additionally, we carry a small cheap 300wh powerstation to charge phones, iPad, and run cpap. We don’t use the tv when boondocking. If we want tv, we watch on iPad which uses only 1/10 the power of a tv. We seldom run ac appliances. If there’s no need for furnace, we routinely go 5 days on our setup (170ah LFP, 2000w Xantrex, 300w solar) that isn’t nearly as robust as the FLX setup. The FLX should be able go for a week or more. It has more solar and a much bigger battery than we have. IMHO, FLX is squarely in the sweet spot gear-wise for virtually unlimited boondocking without generator, if power is used wisely.

We love our compressor fridge and would never go back to a two way absorption fridge. Bottom line, to boondock comfortably on a modest setup, you just have to be conscious of what you’re burning you watts on, and eliminate unnecessary stuff. Just some suggestions here (don’t want to offend):

1. Use your negative shunt monitor to record power consumption of every appliance both ac and dc.
2. Keep a record of how much you’re using the appliances.
3. Turn the Xantrex OFF when you don’t need ac power. It will use a bunch of power even in standby. I installed an inverter disconnect to make sure my Xantrex wasn’t using battery. When I need some ac, I connect for only the time I’m using it.
4. Park your rig such that the curbside faces north or east. If that’s not possible, extend awning to shade curbside where the fridge is located. Limit the number of times you open the fridge.
5. Wash your roof solar panels. Accumulated dirt on panels reduce efficiency by 20% or more.
6. When you are at home, test your fridge, recording shunt watts consumed over a 24hr period making sure that there are no other loads on the battery including phantom loads. Then test again at different fridge settings until you get the right combination of coldness performance and energy consumption. This is a trial and error process, but it pays off big time when you go boondocking.
7. Keep fridge and especially freezer as full as possible to preserve thermal mass. Rotate two ice packs alternately from fezzes to fridge
8. Consider a cheap powerstation ($200) and a cheap portable panel to charge it. You’ll be surprised how much energy use you can offload. We also throw our cheapo powerstation in the back seat of the tv to charge when we go on excursions.

[creativepart]

I'm not sure how much you should be using in a day... but I'm pretty sure Winnebago is going to say it's "up to" 4 or 5 days. And that's a best case scenario with super long daylight hours, super low energy usage, in the most solar productive months and locations possible.

In other words - it's marketing speak. Not necessarily real world attainable. Heck, use the air conditioner for 5 hours and see how many days you can get then.

Jim's Number 3 above is very important. Without even using anything from the Inverter, just having it on uses a lot of battery power.

Putting it charitably, Winnebago is guilty of wishful thinking when they introduce a new product - some would say they are lying but I think there is no planned malice behind it, they're just super confident in the system they've developed. I remember the video bragging about running two A/Cs on 30-amp shore power without any problems at all. Yeah, right.

[Marine359]

100ah in one day is a ton of power. Everybody’s boondocking needs and habits are different. However, I just don’t see how it’s possible to use that much if you’re boondocking in a small TT. You just have to be aware that you’re not hooked up to a power pedestal, and you aren’t tempted to use your inverter as if it were a substitute for shore power. About 25-30 amphrs in addition to fridge draw is about all you need to boondock comfortably. So, IMHO, WBGO claims may have a bit of marketing bent, but is pretty darn accurate for an average boondocker with average power needs. They aren’t making wild claims. Taking an energy consumption inventory/audit will help you figure out where your power is going. Without knowing, you’re just shooting in the dark. The numbers I gave are “real world”: we use 75-80 ah/day, and produce 75-80 ah/day in good sun. We’ve only had to use our generator one time over the past year. However, if you’re a FLX using Truma A/C and water heater not on propane, I can see usage being high.

[lgudema]

Thanks for your detailed responses Jim and all.

In the evening, when the panels are producing nothing, with the refrig on but not doing anything, the Lithionics battery app shows a draw of 2A/26.2w. When the refrig kicks in to cool itself for a few minutes, it'll go up to 8A/104.9w.

Other than that, we use an electric kettle for a few minutes in the morning. Use hot water to do the dishes/take a shower for a few minutes. Only have used AC, microwave, oven, or TV when connected to shore power. So we're not using a lot of power.

Our battery is turning off by itself at random times. So maybe it doesn't really charge to 320 AH?

[Marine359]

Your battery has an app that should tell you how much is being used and what the voltage and SOC are. Lithionics doesn’t have to get to 100% because it’s so freakin huge.

Resistive loads are the enemy of your battery. Anything that uses a resistive heating element will normally draw 800w or more,,,and for how long? Is it really necessary to run those loads when heating stuff with propane (like kettle and hot water heater) uses virtually no battery power. Plus a kettle of water will boil faster on the range top, and the hot water heater will charge faster on propane.

Happy boondocking.

[lgudema]

Originally Posted by Marine359

Your battery has an app that should tell you how much is being used and what the voltage and SOC are. Lithionics doesn’t have to get to 100% because it’s so freakin huge.

Resistive loads are the enemy of your battery. Anything that uses a resistive heating element will normally draw 800w or more,,,and for how long? Is it really necessary to run those loads when heating stuff with propane (like kettle and hot water heater) uses virtually no battery power. Plus a kettle of water will boil faster on the range top, and the hot water heater will charge faster on propane.

Happy boondocking.

Using the kettle only uses about 1% of the battery, if that. So doing that once a day is not our problem. It's something else.

[VineVixen]

The same thing is happening to us. The power clicks off around 2:00 in the afternoon for no apparent reason. The refrigerator pulls more from the battery than the panels can reproduce.
We are not technically smart, our brochures are not helpful, we are finding that the off grid promises are overstated.

[lgudema]

Check out the link posted above. We took it back to the dealer and they said that the settings may be the problem.

[GRI]

Ok. I’m trying to figure all of this stuff out. I printed out the settings for the go power and Xantrex.
I was at my camper last Friday and the battery was at 92% with nothing but the Xantrex on. We left the previous Sunday and the battery was at 82% and hadn’t been touched and everything shut off.
We had mostly sunny days and only 10% charged.
Yesterday I had my father in law turn our fridge on eco. We got here today and the battery is at 78% with a 2a load. I tried to connect the go power and no devices come up on the app(first time using). I powered off the blue led button and powered back on and the device showed up but wouldn’t show any info. So I backed out and the device wasn’t there anymore. I can repeat this process with no avail. Update: the Xantrex app connected to the go power unit and wouldn’t let the go power app connect. Settings inputted

So I moved on to the Xantrex app and the only thing that comes up is the go power unit. So I tried to do the settings manually. I figured some of it out but the setting names aren’t the same as the app .
On either unit the settings were mostly correct. Except battery type.
So how do I connect the Xantrex to the app to complete the settings

Also. I cannot run the go power app and the Xantrex app at the same time because the Xantrex app connects to the go power unit first. Lol

[GRI]

Ok. So it was a mostly sunny day today.
Ran only the fridge all day inverter was off. Started at 60%watched the lipo app frequently during the day. The charge from the panels were from 6-10amps never saw anything higher. Only got the battery up to 64% by the time the sun went down. I only saw the 10 amps a few times and that was only because I wiped the solar panels down with a cleaner I bought for them

[VineVixen]

Doesn’t the inverter always need to be on to power the refrigerator?

[Marine359]

GRI,
if you had 8 hours of good sun, your production should have approached 1Kw (83 amps) gross for the day. A 4% net increase over that period is 12.8 amps. That would imply that the fridge (if it was the only load) used 70amps over that period of time. Anything more than 30amps of fridge consumption over that time would be very high.

Hard to speculate what the problem is, but I would start by measuring the Voc of each panel. Next, in daylight, I would turn off everything, including the fridge and see what the charge controller says. How many watts are being produced? Between 10am and 3pm, you should be producing over 150watts, and hopefully closer to 250watts. If you’re getting less than 100w during the sunniest part of the day, you’ve got a component problem. If you’ve checked the Voc, and both panels are within spec range, then logically, the problems lies with wiring to the charge controller, or the charge controller itself.

When checking the solar circuit, do not do so until you disconnect the panels from the gland. You could get shocked because the array is always hot. Good reason to install a manual reset breaker between array and charge controller (where the array cables enter the trailer).

Inverter does not need to be on for fridge. It runs on dc power not ac.

[creativepart]

Originally Posted by GRI

Ok. So it was a mostly sunny day today.
Ran only the fridge all day inverter was off.

Were you at your home in upstate NY when you did this test on a mostly sunny day?

I know it’s mid-June but your location may play a role in how much power your panels generate in a day. So, perhaps that needs to be factored into the calculations?

[creativepart]

Originally Posted by VineVixen

Doesn’t the inverter always need to be on to power the refrigerator?

The Micro Minnie FLX has a 12v fridge that runs off of your batteries not the inverter’s 110v power.

[GRI]

Yes, I’m home in upstate. we bought this camper last spring and I have yet to see it charge higher than 14 amps on solar.

[GRI]

I appreciate all the help . I’ll check into things today . Where should I check for voc?
Probably not going to see much charging today as it’s cloudy.
Another question. When we leave for the week, is there anything we should turn off that will assure a full charge for next weekend?
We normally turn off the fridge, water heater and inverter. Anything else I should be shutting off to maximize charging?
When shutting down for the night the only thing running is the fridge. I get up periodically and check the battery status and the most I see is 2 amps of draw unless the fridge kicks on momentarily