Back at the beginning of March we added a fourth 100 watt solar panel to our solar array on the roof of our RV. Two days later we fried our Renogy Wanderer 30A solar charge controller. Thus began the search to quickly replace it.
We enlisted the help of a couple friends on Discord after we fried our solar charge controller and they ultimately recommended the AIMS Power 40A Solar Charge Controller. We were able to pick one up on Amazon and had it in our hands a few days later.
Our first impression of the unit is that it is heavy! Heavier than we are used to, anyway, since we don’t typically mount heavier things to our flimsy interior RV walls. But we managed to drill it into our wall with a plywood backing inside our cabinet to keep it sturdy until we have our electrical system looked at by a friend later this spring.
I don’t know who wrote the installation manual for this thing, but it certainly didn’t give us all the information we needed. We managed to figure it out, though, and installation was pretty straight forward. Mounting screws were not included so we had to dig through our jar of spare screws (doesn’t everyone have a random container of screws and other small things?) to find what we needed.
Once we got our batteries and solar panels hooked back up we began to monitor the incoming watts from our panels and the voltage of our batteries. It was nighttime when we finally got it all working so we waited until the next day to get a better idea of how our solar panels and batteries were performing.
Unfortunately our batteries did not perform well overnight, despite the seemingly full charge we had before heading to bed. Some troubleshooting with our friends had us returning to the store chain we bought our batteries from which resulted in one of them testing bad and being replaced.
Since replacing the bad battery we’ve been doing a whole lot better on our power retention and consumption. We can get through a day with only our solar power to supply our needs, and we run the generator for an hour or so in the evenings to ensure a full charge before heading to bed. We’ll do even better as the nights get warmer and the furnace isn’t needed as much or at all.
So far we’ve been happy with our AIMS Power Solar Charge Controller. It’s been great for giving us an idea of how much power our batteries are holding and our solar panels are providing, and we look forward to seeing how it performs when we replace our lead acid deep cycle batteries with lithium this spring.
Do you use a solar charge controller? Which one and how do you like it? We’d love to hear from you! Drop a comment below or email me at alicia@simplejoyfuljourney.com. You can also find us on Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest @simplejoyfuljourney. And if you haven’t already, don’t forget to subscribe to our newsletter at the bottom of the page before you go. Have a great week!