My car

[Mrcoolabah1au]

Terry can I hook up the solar panel through the Anderson plug to the bus battery for extra power or is there a better way maybe

[T1 Terry]

You need to connect the solar panel/Anderson plug to the solid state relay (positive) and Victron shunt on the load side (negative) so the solar regulator can control the charging so it doesn't damage the battery and so the Victron BMV knows the amount of charge that went in so it can keep its account books balanced and tell you the truth as far as it knows about just how much is left in the battery. If it doesn't know what is going in or out it can't give accurate results, so everything's negative cable must be connected to the load side of the shunt and only the battery on the battery side of the shunt.

T1 Terry

[Mrcoolabah1au]

What size cable 6mm ?

[T1 Terry]

What size cable 6mm ?

What (watt) size panel and how many are you likely to want to run? How long from the panel to the Anderson plug? How long from the Anderson plug to the SSR and shunt? Need to know all this before I can suggest cable sizes

T1 Terry

[Mrcoolabah1au]

Not sure that i need the car connected on the week end we park under some tree for four day
the soc got down to 25 this got me think need more ( power or solar ) so I thought that i have the gigavac but only use full when driving
hence the idea about Steve solar on the car which is 200 watt panel ?
I have six hundred watts on the bus and 300 in lithium
,second idea I thought of was more batteries or more roof solar?

[T1 Terry]

Not sure that i need the car connected on the week end we park under some tree for four day
the soc got down to 25 this got me think need more ( power or solar ) so I thought that i have the gigavac but only use full when driving
hence the idea about Steve solar on the car which is 200 watt panel ?
I have six hundred watts on the bus and 300 in lithium
,second idea I thought of was more batteries or more roof solar?

Solar only works when the panels are in the sun, D8ABUS (Caravanner Forum) hasn't told us about where they got their lunar panels from yet so we are stuck with the sun activated type for now.
More batteries will give you longer before you run out of power
Portable panels will allow you to park in the shade but put the panels in the sun
A second battery in the toad will allow you to go exploring and charge the second battery via DC to DC and solar, then transfer that stored power into the house battery sort of like a Jerry can
so more than one method of solving the problem, just need to decide which suits best. Portable panels if you plan to stay with the bus, the Jerry Can battery idea if you want to go off for the day and top up when you get back at night...... or just don't park in the shade in the first place

T1 Terry

[BruceS]

Or maybe a little Honda in a good quality box to boost for those odd times you need it?

[Mrcoolabah1au]

Yamaha sounds like the best option

[pet-els]

I thought that going Lipo was to get away from geni's

PeterH

[BruceS]

I'm not sure you could ever have enough batteries or solar to cover every single different set of circumstances Peter.
Look at SA?
The power only failed a couple of times and yet they are talking about spending $500mil just to cover those few times.
That's more than a baby genny would cost?
If it saves the cells going way below 2.9V then it might be cheap insurance!