[snowie]

Hi, we are very new to the Campervan life and have bought a Ford Transit High Cube. Its noted that it has a new 84Ah House battery and a normal starter battery.
I am wanting to put in additional Deep Cycle Batteries and Solar on the Roof.
We will mostly be using in the weekend and running the following, Fridge (old fridge, upgrade not available till Jan 21), 5 LED Lights, Water Pump,12v TV, external LED lights and a house radio.
Any suggestions and recommendation would be very appreciative, and yes I do apologies, you all probably get asked this question many time over, thanks snowie

[Neddy]

Your new fridge will have a large influence on how much solar and battery capacity you need. Choose one now, even if you don't buy it straight away.
It would be good if you could find/measure the current consumption of your TV. That and your fridge will be the main power users.
Do you know what your existing "84Ah" battery is rated at? If it is C/10 rather than C/100, it may well be all that you need if your total energy requirements are not too big. I would be in no hurry to upgrade it until you know whether there is any need to do so.
I presume your van has 12 volt electrics. If so, installing a dual-sensing Voltage Sensitive Relay would be a really good thing to do, keeping the Starter battery topped up from solar power and charging your House battery whenever the motor is running.
The usual advice for solar panel capacity is "fit as much as you can". Carefully measure the flatish
areas available on your rooftop then you can see what options are available to you. Two 200W 12 volt panels would be really good, if there is room for them.
I reckon you should install a Juntek battery monitor right at the start. Without a proper battery monitor we can all only guess as to what your power production and storage needs really are.

Neville.

[snowie]

Thanks Neddy, that just opens up more question re the fridge, I was going to buy a Dometic CRX-1110 Fridge/Freezer 12/24/240V - 108 litres, uses on average 50w, and can only assume that's per hour???

[Neddy]

With an average power consumption of 50 Watts (about 4 Amps) that fridge is quite inefficient. Be sure to take a look at an Isotherm CR130 EL. Larger (130L vs 109L) cheaper ($1350 vs $1800) with roughly one quarter the power consumption. (Same weight.)
A more power-hungry fridge will require a bigger House battery and more solar power.

[aroma]

Hi
I am going down the same road, the question I was goin to ask tonight
what's the difference between the Juntek and a MPTT controller
cheers

[Neddy]

The Juntek is a Battery Monitor. These measure the current flowing into and out of a battery, keeping a running total of its "State Of Charge".

An MPPT controller takes solar panel output and matches it to the battery needs. Without a controller of some sort, solar panels would overcharge the battery.

[David Wallace]

The Juntek could used as a change controller as it incorporates a programmable relay that could be set up to operate to cut off charging at a preset level. Im thinking of doing this for my LifePo4 battery charger where I what to stop charging at 14.2 volts instead of the chargers 14.6volts. See the below link for details.
http://evbitz.uk/Other_Stuff..._files/J ... 0Guide.pdf
I guess instead of 230v charger input this could be substitute for a solar panel array.
Check out "Bused_A NZ" on YouTube where he uses a Electrodacus BMS which pretty much does that, uses a set of relays to disconnect the solar panels when the battery had reached the correct charge voltage.

[Nut17]

That is way too complicated for me David. I will happily stick with a reputable MPPT solar charge controller with a pre set constant charge voltage and in my case a Votronic battery monitor which can be used to isolate the battery o protect from a high or low state of charge. In snowie's case where a lead acid battery is being used, a proper multi stage MPPT charge controller is a must in my opinion coupled with a Juntek or similar monitor to accurately keep track of the battery state of charge.