Overlhander Truck Camper Electrical System
The electrical system is probably the place where I have expended the most energy (read: $$$) on upgrades. Solar, batteries, charger, inverter, monitoring, wiring... At this point there aren't many components I haven't touched. Today, I think it's pretty much perfect for a camper of this size.
Here's a look at a system overview (click on images for larger view):
The heart of the electrical system is the battery bank. When I purchased our Saratoga it came with a pair of Group24 marine ("deep-cycle/starting") batteries, which unfortunately failed us on our very first camping trip requiring starting the truck engine just to do enough charging bring in the slide-out. Realizing we needed more energy storage I upgraded the batteries to a pair of 6 Volt Trojan T-125 true deep-cycle batteries (aka: golf-cart batteries)
This gave me 235 Amp-hours of battery capacity (@12V / 20-hr rate), which really is a lot of capacity for a truck camper! However these big flooded lead-acid (FLA) batteries had some drawbacks in my application; They charge slowly, they require maintenance, their performance is affectected by ambient temperature, and most importantly their voltage sags under heavy loads (e.g. running a microwave from an inverter).
I needed a solution that was going to get past all of these drawbacks, so got out my measuring tape, researched batteries, and got to work. I ultimately settled on installing three Odyssey PC-2150 AGM batteries in camper's basement. This yields 300 Amp/hrs of capacity (@12V / 20-hr rate). It also moves the mass of the batteries down and closer to the front of the camper and provides nearly unlimited charge and discharge current.
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| Improved battery placement |
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| Configuration of batteries in TC basement |
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| New "battery box" in basement with tie-downs and 1/0 Battery cable |
- Inverter/Charger
- Solar panels
- Charge Controllers
- Battery monitor
- Control panel
- Truck to camper wiring
- Generator
- LED lighting
- Dinette light
- Water heater
- Tank heaters
Impressive work on the battery mod ! I have a 2005 Ram 3500 SRW Cummins Longbed Quadcabnsame color as yours & am considering a truck camper with a dry weight of 3100lb. What is your handling experience so far with your Alpenlite ? Looking for updates to your blog !
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