One of the most common questions we receive is, “How are your solar and batteries working out now that you are traveling?” They worked awesome when we were doing our build in the middle of the desert in the Phoenix area. Traveling is different though. There are many more variables
More Power for a HOT Summer
When we were building the bus at our house, power was never an issue. Even in the ridiculously hot summers of Phoenix at over 110℉. We plugged in all of our power tools to the house and ran our bus air conditioners off of the solar and battery all day
Solar Install: Part 4 - Finishing Up
Finally, we are at the end of our solar install. We had just a few last pieces to put it all together and see our designs come to fruition.
First up was mounting the upper panels into the racks. Luckily that was fairly simple since the racks were already up
Solar Install: Part 2 - Mounting the Lower Sliding Rails & Combiner Box
We were so relieved after mounting the Superstrut rails and upper racks. That part felt like the biggest hurdle in this solar install. When everything lined up and installed how we planned, it felt like a big weight was lifted off our shoulders. But, we couldn’t sit back and
Solar Install: Part 1 - Mounting the Rails & Upper Racks
After prepping the strut with the L-brackets and building our own scaffolding, the day had finally come to start installing the solar rack. Or so we thought.
We had picked up our bus from storage just like any other Friday morning. I was following behind the bus in our car,
Prepping for Our Solar Install
The time has finally come to start installing our solar rack and panels! We have been anxiously awaiting the day. As you know if you have followed along this past year, we designed and built our solar rack while the bus was away being painted. We didn’t even have
Solar Rack: Part 5 - Fitting a Linear Actuator
When we first started dreaming up the plan to have two layers of solar panels with the lower layer sliding out, we knew that the biggest challenge would be automating the sliding mechanism. There is no way we want to be climbing up on top of the bus all the
Solar Rack: Part 4 - Production, Clamps and Brackets
We finally had our solar rack design planned out and one of four sections built as our prototype. Now, we just had to recreate the prototype three more times. We set up production for each piece and part - measuring, cutting, sanding, drilling, bolting together, welding, sanding again, painting.
All
Solar Rack: Part 3 - Building the Upper Layer
Last week, we got a good start building our solar rack by designing and building the prototype for the lower layer of solar panels (4 of our 8 Sunpower E20 435W panels). This week, we are moving on up to the upper layer of panels (the other 4 panels). Initially,
Solar Rack: Part 2 - Building the Lower Layer
It’s finally time to tackle building a rack to hold our solar panels. The goal is to get all eight of our Sunpower E20 435W panels on our roof, giving us nearly 3500W of solar. We realize that using panels of this size (81.5”x41.5”) is quite
Planning a Solar Rack - Part 1: Building a Model & Our Plans
The bus finally made it into Mexico to the paint shop! Some of you may be wondering why we aren’t waiting until the end of our renovation to have the bus painted. The main reason is that we want the roof repainted before we install our solar panels. And
Bus Solar Part 1 - Researching and Buying Solar Panels
We have been researching solar power since before we started on this full-time journey. Initially, we wanted to setup a system that would run our pool pump and maybe offset some of our high Arizona air-conditioning bills. There is something really cool about getting energy directly from the sun (for