Every one of our projects is unique. Every customer has particular requirements or desires of both their off-grid power systems, and of their property itself. But once in a while, we get to do something that is really different, and this is one of those projects. While the actual solar power system and installation isn’t particularly out of the ordinary, it’s intended purpose is-a completely off-grid RV park!
This customer needed a place to park their RV while they built a house on the property. Rather than spend a lot of money installing solar on their RV, they elected to build a base power system that could power their RV. And while they were at it, they wanted their RVing friends to be able to come visit and have hookups as well, so a mini RV park was born!
There was much more than just a solar power system installed here-a complete electrical, water, propane, and septic system was put in as well. Done Right Electrical dug all the trenches for all these systems as we were on site for the power system with the right equipment to get the job done.
Once the trenching was completed, all the underground utilities went into their respective places and everything was backfilled and compacted.
Then we moved the 20’ shipping container carefully into place. The container serves as the platform for the power system, as well as secure storage for all the extras a mini RV park needs.
Nine 380 watt panels on tilt up mounts completely fill the 20’ containers roof.
One great thing about the SolArk inverters is they are rated to be installed outside, which opens up a whole new realm of space-saving possibilities. In this case, we elected to mount the SolArk 12K inverter to the outside of the container on the shady North side to free up interior space, and keep the inverter out of a hot uninsulated steel container during the summer. Supply chain issues at the time left a shortage of outdoor rated gutters, so we built our own out of aluminum to make sure the job was completed on time. (We happen to have a full metal fab shop) A pair of Fortress 5.4 batteries stores the power for camp. We custom built an outdoor enclosure complete with automated climate controls for a Victron autotransformer, which is configured for load-balancing duties.
From there, the balanced power is fed to the main electrical distribution panel, which in turn has circuits for multiple 50amp RV pedestals, as well as circuits for the containers lighting and convenience outlets.
After the main install was completed, a Fortress battery enclosure that we added insulation and an automatic heater to was installed to protect the batteries and allow them to function in cold weather.
A dedicated Starlink allows us to keep tabs on the power system remotely from anywhere we are and make programming adjustments should they be needed.
This was just the starting point for the power system, and plans are in place to add more solar panels and a fully automated backup generator as time and funds allow.
