Video Transcript for Talking Rich Solar RV Solar Charging Kits with the Manufacturer

Hey there neighbors, Kevin here with etrailer, and today we have our friend George from Rich Solar and he's gonna be telling us a little bit more about Rich Solar and what they have to offer. Can you tell us a little bit more Yeah, absolutely. Thank you for the opportunity. We offer one stop solution for all the product needs. So, charge controllers, inverters, solar paddles. It's really what we pride ourselves in and making sure that the consumer neighbor has all the necessary components to have a good experience with our products.

All right, so we learned a little bit yesterday during your product training. Yeah. Why don't you take us through the process. Say, I am a brand new camper and I'm just starting to off grid, I wanna get my solar set up, you know, what are the big factors I should be kind of considering before I purchase anything Yeah, absolutely. So, the biggest thing is trying to understand what you're trying to power, right If it's gonna be small loads, maybe some fans, some lights, and you can get away with a smaller solar system and a smaller battery bank.

But if you're trying to do bigger loads and you're trying to have a robust battery bank, that's when you really wanna step it up. Maybe consider like a 600 watt kit or maybe one of our 1200 watts kit. It really all comes down to consumption and how long you wanna power that load for. Okay. Now what if I'm looking for a little bit of AC usage, I know that has a huge draw.

Yeah. So, what kind of kits are you starting to recommend when people say, Hey, I'm gonna be at this higher power draw. Is there kind of a cutoff where you guys say, well this is kind of the, you know, minimum you're gonna have to be at Yeah, yeah. So, I mean 1200 watt kit instantly comes to mind when somebody mentions an air conditioner, right But even at 1200 watt kits, depending on the air conditioner and how big it is, there may be a substantial draw that has to be offset with perhaps some kind of shore power connection or a different way of supplementing that power. So, we have a good example right here.

This is actually one of our other employees trailers here. He's using this for off-grid pretty much exclusively. So, if he wanted to have his AC running, you know, obviously he's gonna need to get that 1200 watt kit. Mm-hmm. You know, to make sure that he can actually get to a substantial point where he has enough replenishment to do so, obviously. Yep. But I mean, we're looking at what about five or six panels at that point Correct. And that's gonna be four foot by two foot. So, we really don't have that much real estate when it comes to a smaller little off-roading trailer like this, or even with the camper van that we have next to us too. So, what would you recommend in that case Yeah, so I mean you can definitely max out on the overall real estate on top, and then you can always go with something like our briefcase style panels and use that to supplement some of the power. So, maybe you could do 600 watts up top and maybe three of these briefcase style panels connected in parallel or in series to supplement that power and try to get you closer to that 1200 watts system. All right, so we've got a little bit better of a vantage point to where you can actually see the roof of our trailer here. And you can see he's got two panels already 'cause he's got the 400 watt kit in there. He does have a tiny bit of space just past those panels. It's a little bit hard to see from this angle, but he does have probably a foot, foot and a half of room just past those before it reaches the roof fence. So, he could probably get one more tinier panel in which I know you guys offer. Yeah. Can you tell me a little bit more about that Yeah, the slim panel has a width of about a foot and a half, so it's a little bit stretched out. It's a little bit more flexible when it comes to tighter spaces like that. So, I think that would be a good fit. And considering that he has a 40 amp controller, he can expand all the way up to 600 watts. So, that could be either one of our briefcase style panels or maybe adding one or two of those slim panels on top. So, over on our camper van, we have pretty much set this up to be a overlanding only camper here, just because he doesn't have a shore power inlet, he's not planning on adding one at any point here. He's just wanting to totally off grid with this and really just get out in nature. So, on this I added in a 12 volt vent fan, a 12 volt AC unit, which does obviously have a much larger draw on it. He's got interior lights that are all LED, so that's not a huge draw on it, but he also has a bunch of different 12 volt outlets. One is gonna be powering a cooler fridge and then one is, or a couple of them are actually gonna be powering, you know, tablets and stuff, keeping the kids little games all kind of running that way they're occupied if there's not something that they can be outside doing at that time. So, can you give us a little bit of a breakdown of each kit What one would you recommend for that kind of usage Yeah, I mean, so I mean there's a couple options there. He can start at small with 100 watt kit. Obviously that's only gonna be for like the LED lights, maybe charging cell phones and tablets, right But if he's trying to power a fridge, I'd recommend stepping up to like 400 watts, even 600 watts and really cool feature on our batteries as you can communicate via Bluetooth and you can see what power is being taken out of the battery. So, you can kind of guess and see how long you can run that load for. And that gives you a better understanding of maybe you want to expand or add some additional batteries or even add some additional panels to try to keep up with that consumption. So, now we're down at the van here. We've got some of the products that make up these kits that we've been talking about all kinda laid out here for you to get a good view of. Can you just tell me a little bit more about your charge controllers and just, you know, what difference they make, what really makes those stand out compared to the rest of the competition Yeah, absolutely. So, we always recommend MPPTs that's gonna be the best technology to use, especially with lithium battery banks where they sometimes activate their BMS, MPPT charge controller will be able to reactivate that battery and bring it back from that storage or sleeping mode. So, MPPTs look something like this, and they're pretty easy to connect. You have four terminals, two for your solar panel and two for your battery. Here we just have our battery connected. But you can see the interface of the controller, it's gonna show you different information like your incoming voltage, your incoming current, and it does give you some good information to keep in mind. But obviously the best information is gonna come from the battery, and using that Bluetooth connection. All of our solar panels have MC4 connectors. With all of our kits, the 200 watt, the 400 watt, we always recommend a series connection just because it's gonna be the easiest way to install those panels. And when you think about series, you just gotta understand that each panel has two connectors on the back, a positive and a negative. And those guys would just connect to each other in a daisy chain orientation all throughout that system. Kevin Alright, so now we have the battery and you've got the app pulled up and that's given us quite a bit of information. Can you dive a little bit more into how to fully use this app and you know, really get the most out of it Yeah, so the most important information is gonna be right in the front dead center there, that state of charge SOC for short. And it shows you exactly what percentage your battery's at. So, that way if you drop into your low twenties, probably a good idea to turn off some lows and allow the system to recharge your batteries. It's also gonna show you what current is being taken out of the battery and what charging current is coming into the battery. So, you can see if your panels are working appropriately and what kind of power you're taking outta that battery. So, say I am out at the stream, maybe I'm fishing or I'm just floating for the day, I come back thinking that you know, my battery should be fully charged, I'm out in plenty of sunlight, but I get inside and find my battery's really low. What would be my first step if I had some kind of issue like that Yeah, so the first step we'd recommend is pull up your app, see what's going on with the battery. If there is an error code or that BMS activated, it will tell you why it activated, whether it's low voltage, low capacity, or maybe the temperature was just too much for that battery and it's trying to protect itself. Usually the battery will recover as soon as that error clears itself, and it'll be activated by the MPPT charge controller. So, the charge controller would send that pulse Yeah. Wake it back up and then it should essentially fix itself. Yep. Go right back to recharging the battery. Correct, correct. So, sometimes if there's a load that's consistently discharging that battery, it will reengage again just because that load continues to drain it down and the solar system can't keep up. But otherwise, if that load is turned off, that charge controller will start to post the battery and then activate it and then the system will auto correct itself. So, I know you guys carry both PWM and MPPT, so charge controllers like what we have out here, you know, what would be my differentiator What puts you past that step where you're now gonna switch from PWM up to MPPT Because a lot the stigma that really is out there is that MPPT is just so much better than PWM and it's light years away, you know, can you kind of break that down for us Yeah, absolutely. So, PWM controllers definitely have a purpose. They're gonna be more cost effective, but the drawback to PWM is it's an older technology, right Where the charge controller just turning on and off really quickly and that's what regulates the power where MPPT, it's very much, it's a lot more efficient up to 99% efficiency. So, what that means is out of 100 watt panel with an MPPT charge controller, you can get up to 95, 99 watts into your battery bank and with its PWM counterpart, you would only be able to get about 70 or 80 watts of that charging power into your battery bank. So, we always recommend MPPT, this is gonna maximize the efficiency of that system. All right, so just kind of summarize everything we talked about today, there is going to be a pre-made kit for the people just starting out all the way up to those people that are full on boondocking, but you guys are also gonna be covering all those people that just wanna maybe add on to their setup. You've got all the different components that you could add in without having to purchase a whole extra kit with it as well. So, that way if you're really kind of customizing your setup to fit exactly what you need, you guys have the solution for them. Once they have this all set up, what kind of warranty are we looking at Solar panels are gonna have a 25 year output warranty and batteries are gonna have a 10 year warranty. So, any problems that come up with the component, we wanna try to educate the customer first and see what's going on with the product. And if it truly is defective, we will always move forward with that replacement. Well, that sounds like a great solution for anyone out there or you at home as the viewer. If you are looking for a kit just to kind of start yourself out, or maybe you are, that person that is full on boondocking, Rich Solar is going to be the right solution for you. If you still have some questions about what kind of kit is going to be the right for your specific setup, then please feel free to reach out to us. We are asked the experts link, a comment on this video or a phone call to our customer service department and we'd be happy to help you out on your journey. With all that being said though, I do wanna thank you, George, for spending your time out here. You've been here yesterday and today doing trainings so that we all have a better understanding of how solar works and how your products can be that solution for those out there trying to get solar added into their setup. So, I really wanna thank you for that and- Yeah, no, well thank you Kevin. We appreciate the opportunity. Like I said, and you guys have a fantastic team here. We're really proud to be working with you guys and we really want this relationship to keep growing and flourishing for all of us.