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It seems like just a couple weeks ago I made a video about keeping your RV’s vehicle starting battery charged with solar… because it was!

But on our current road trip, we found ourselves in Bend, Oregon, which is the home of Zamp Solar.  We stopped in, and not only had they seen our video, but they had some ideas on how we could accomplish the same thing – but better and easier!  Have a look at the video to see what we did.

 

Basically, we replaced our existing solar charge controller with another model, the ZS-30AD.  This is a charge controller that is capable of charging two batteries (chassis and house, in our case).  The important thing to us about this controller is that the two batteries charged can have different chemistries, since we have a lithium-ion house battery, and an AGM chassis battery.  Beyond that, you can direct the proportion of the charge that goes to each battery with a simple programming step.  You’ll actually see me carry out all the programming in the video.

Besides simply swapping the panel, the only change we had to make was to run the included wiring harness from the solar charge controller to the vehicle starting battery.  That was actually the hardest part of the whole install, since it had us pulling wires.  Once we got that done, it was hooking up four electrical connections and we were done.

The charge controller we used was the ZS-30AD, which you can find toward the bottom of this page on the Zamp site:  https://www.zampsolar.com/charge-controllers

You can find the same controller on Amazon, at this link:  Zamp ZS-30AD Solar Charge Controller

So now, I have a way to keep the chassis battery charged that doesn’t require me to do anything at all.  AND, I have the setup I came up with in the first video as a spare… Hmmmmm…..