Solaring Up Our Cargo Trailer for E-bikes Behind Winnebago View Motorhome

If you are a regular reader of my blog, you will know that in October we bought a couple of Lectric XP 3.0 E-bikes to take along when we go camping.

We decided to transport them inside of a small 4x6 cargo trailer. Here is my blog post about outfitting the cargo trailer:

outfitting-enclosed-cargo-trailer-for-e.bikes

Now we've gone one step further, and decided to expand our solar array by putting a 320 watt panel up on the roof of the cargo trailer!

Previously, on our last motorhome, we had 500 Watts of solar on the roof and that was more than adequate, along with a bank of four deep cycle 6 volt batteries. 

Now on this Winnebago View motorhome, we only have two 6 volt batteries, and a 100 watt set of portable solar panels. They work well, but we decided we would like to have something mounted up on a roof so we don't have to move them around as much. 

We really didn't want to mount solar panels onto the roof of the new motorhome. We prefer to park in the shade for comfort. We decided to have the solar mounted on the roof of the cargo trailer. 

Now we can charge up the e-bikes even while they are inside of the trailer. We have other items that could be charged from inside the trailer as well. 

Plus, by having this roof solar panel set up, we can plug in the motorhome (via something new to us called a Power Station) so it can top off the motorhome batteries at the same time. 

The third thought is that I would like to be able to run my sewing machine when we are camping, and have it set up outside. That usually means running a cord back into the motorhome's inverter power system. But now with this extra solar and equipment on the cargo trailer, I don't need to tap into the motorhome. We can save that power in those batteries for evenings and overnight. 

Well, you know Steve... He was watching on Facebook Marketplace. There was a gentleman replacing some rental solar panels that were only a few years old. The company was changing an array to larger panels and he was selling these 320 watt panels for only $125 each. One was the exact size that we needed for the roof of the 4x6 cargo trailer. 

He made up some brackets that can be tiltable. The panel is held up off the roof so it does not build up heat underneath it. The brackets are bolted into the side of the trailer rather than with multiple holes through the roof, avoiding any potential roof leaks. 

He put it together easily in one afternoon. Now the one single large panel is mounted up on the roof. He ordered a special grommet type shielded connector that will route the power cords to the inside with no risk of leaks. 

It can tilt to either side if need be. But in all honesty, we made the old Safari's panels tiltable, but we never needed to tilt them. We were always charged up to 100% before noon.

This trailer is easily maneuverable around a campsite, so we can push it to where the sun is. Also, it can charge up this new system even while we are driving down the road.

Here's what the cargo trailer looks like when it's hooked up behind our motorhome.

This little trailer hauls our Lectric E-bikes as well as our excess camping gear. We have things in there like our camp stove/oven, portable fire pit, instapot, chainsaw, and extra firewood or jugs of water if needed. 

Okay, back to the solar installation. The next step is once we get the power from the panels routed to the inside of the trailer, where does it go from there?

Well, that is our newest acquisition. We just ordered a Bluetti AC200L power station. This is basically a huge LiFePO4 battery. Lithium iron phosphate. 

The unit already has built-in ALL of the additional equipment we normally would have to buy with a traditional solar setup installation:

It has the MPPT solar controller, 

it has the battery charger, 

it has the pure sine wave inverter,

it has uninterrupted power supply,

It has Wi-Fi / Bluetooth app connectivity for monitoring, 

and it has surge protection. 

It can be charged up by solar, 

or by 120vAC plug-in, 

or by 12 volt car charging, 

or from our generator. 

On the front surface are multiple outlets for 12 volts, USB, C type phone chargers, four 120vAC outlets and a large 30 amp outlet for the motorhome. 

Once this unit is charged up, it can handle being depleted all of the way down to 5%. Then it shuts off to protect itself. This is a lot different than our Trojan flooded wet cell batteries that we have on the motorhome itself. Those we never let get drained down any lower than the top 30%, with 70% remaining at all times. 

Here is the link to the unit we bought:

https://bluettipower.com/products/ac200l

It will be here in a couple days, and I will do another blog post of everything all set up and operational.

Steve added an exterior electrical hatch door on the side of the trailer to run cords out to our campsite from the power station. Now we could run my sewing machine, the instapot, or charge up the E-bikes, or our Sena helmet communication devices, or even our cell phones and laptops from right at the campsite. This will lessen the draw on the two batteries of the motorhome. At any time we can just run the motorhome cord into the cargo trailer and plug it in to the Bluetti for additional power. 

Oh, one more thing we added to the back of our cargo trailer is this handy-dandy solar powered motion detection light and alarm system. It's REALLY loud with flashing red and blue lights. 

It's one more item to protect ourselves, but also handy for seeing what we are doing behind the cargo trailer if it is dark out. 

Here is the link to that:

Solar Motion Sensor Security Light

We are gearing up to get ready to head out mid-February, after Nicholas's neutering is complete.

We are looking forward to doing some boondocking out on some dispersed camping perhaps in Texas, or BLM land in New Mexico or Arizona, who knows?