Remove Zamp solar panels, 2018 View

[creativepart]

Mike, keep in mind your Fuse is a lot shorter in height and length (even width) than my Adventurer. So, my wire runs are quite a bit longer than yours.

[AJMike]

Originally Posted by creativepart

Mike, keep in mind your Fuse is a lot shorter in height and length (even width) than my Adventurer. So, my wire runs are quite a bit longer than yours.

Ah, yes. My mistake.

I tend to forget that not everyone's setup is identical to mine.

[Kayak73]

A few posts back...No 12 volt panels are not 12 volt. The original Zamp panels on our View were 19.2 volts open circuit.

24 volt panels are usually open circuit voltage around 38 vdc. Why it matters is voltage drop across distance over the same gauge wiring. The hard thing is most panels made for RV use are "12 vdc" which means 19 to 20 vdc open circuit while 24 volt or 48 volt panels are used in stick and brick applications normally.

Now if you have a big roof class A easy to find. If you have a tight roof View not so easy and the choices are more limited. If you can mount the higher voltage panels it is a better bang for the buck because you will replace the controller with a better product which will take care of changing voltage for you and you might use the OEM wiring with much less voltage drop.

[Elkman]

What is mentioned in the Winnebago documentation is that the Zamp 3-port roof cap is rated for a maximum of 450 Watts. Also using a standard combiner or C-box makes for fewer connectors and fewer points of failure.

Gauge wire needed depends on the voltage and the length of the run. With the crude Winnebago installation of the Zamp kit on my 2021 Navion the 15 foot long Zamp cables were tied into a bundle and so there is 15 feet of cable when ony 4 feet and 8 feet long cable lengths were needed to reach the Zamp roof cap.

Add in the reports of severe deterioration of the Zamp panel wire after several years of UV exposure and it seems prudent if adding panels to use new 10 gauge UV resistant cable like that sold by AM Solar and use a single pair of connectors at the panel and wire the other end, cut to length, into the C-box.

I would want to determine how much the flexible 100 Watt panels are actually producing on a sunny day. If they are providing 4 amps there will be at best a 25% gain with new 100W panels. It also comes down to whether after adding two more panels for 290 Watts more production and an additional 15 amps if that is "good enough". If under normal conditions the batteries are back to 100% SOC before long before sunset, there is no gain from additional solar panel output.

A panel that fits on my Navion with its two 100W Zamp panels is the Grape 190W panel that sells for as little as $220 online. I bought mine on newegg.com and it was sold and shipped by Grape solar and arrived in a matter of days.

[AJMike]

Originally Posted by Elkman

What is mentioned in the Winnebago documentation is that the Zamp 3-port roof cap is rated for a maximum of 450 Watts.

I think it depends upon which combiner you have. The one on our 2018 Fuse is rated at 510 watts and the cover is embossed with that value.

Originally Posted by Elkman

Gauge wire needed depends on the voltage and the length of the run. With the crude Winnebago installation of the Zamp kit on my 2021 Navion the 15 foot long Zamp cables were tied into a bundle and so there is 15 feet of cable when ony 4 feet and 8 feet long cable lengths were needed to reach the Zamp roof cap.

I guess that depends upon which RV is involved. The 2 factory installed SunPower panels (from Zamp) were situated right next to the combiner and neither wire exceeds perhaps 2 feet, and there is no extra wire.

Originally Posted by Elkman

I would want to determine how much the flexible 100 Watt panels are actually producing on a sunny day. If they are providing 4 amps there will be at best a 25% gain with new 100W panels. It also comes down to whether after adding two more panels for 290 Watts more production and an additional 15 amps if that is "good enough". If under normal conditions the batteries are back to 100% SOC before long before sunset, there is no gain from additional solar panel output.

One of the things I noticed here in Arizona is that during the months when the sun is high in the sky we get a much greater amount of power from our 100 watt panels that I would have thought possible. 3 100 watt panels consistently give us more than 16 amps and, when the days are cloudless, even more. The most we saw was 19.9 amps, and that is above specs, so the flexible SunPower panels are quite capable to delivering a lot of power.

[Elkman]

My RV was built in October of 2020 and the 15 foot Zamp panel cables were smaller than 12 gauge and the excess length was tied into a bundle. Winnebago had a sales increase of 39% for the third quarter of 2020 over the same period pre-pandemic in 2019. No doubt they were focused on shipping units out the door and not about quality control, especially on the roof. So I have 15 feet of 14 gauge wire instead of 5 feet of 10 gauge wire coming off the Zamp panels.

The 3-port cap power rating has increased but the Winnebago Owner Manual has not been updated. It is now rated for 510 Watts from the solar panels.

A separate but related matter is that although the new Zamp ZS-30 charge controller now has a setting for lithium phosphate batteries it only changed the max voltage setting and it does not have a different charging profile. For that you need to upgrade it with a Victron 100/50 or similar MPPT controller.

I checked the roof on my 2021 Navion 24D to see if a 190W panel could replace the Zamp 110W panels but there is not enough space for the wider panel. There is room for a Grape 190W panel mounted crossways and for adding a third 100W Renogy panel.

There is a port in the basement for attaching outside ground panels but this going to be part of the 510 Watt power limitation of the Zamp ZS-30A controller and so less useful if the Zamp controller is not upgraded. The issue is not with Zamp products but their use on an expensive RV by its manufacturer.

[AJMike]

Originally Posted by Elkman

A separate but related matter is that although the new Zamp ZS-30 charge controller now has a setting for lithium phosphate batteries it only changed the max voltage setting and it does not have a different charging profile. For that you need to upgrade it with a Victron 100/50 or similar MPPT controller.

I am no expert in this area, so perhaps I am wrong, but the manual for the Zamp 30 amp solar controller lists the specs and they seem to me to indicate that there is a different charging profile for Lithium batteries.

1) According to the manual here is no equalization charge for Lithium batteries, and

2) The voltages are different for Lithium.

Added to that, in a discussion with one of the tech guys at Zamp a couple of weeks ago, I was told that the charging profile is different, although I did not ask how they were different.

What other than the voltages and the equalization charge would you expect to be different for Lithium batteries? As I said, I am no expert in this area.