Lots of answers here, so I may repeat one or several.
If you have a TRUE solar package pre-installed, you'll know because there will be a "gland" on the roof. It will look vaguely like this:
https://www.amazon.com/Go-Power-GP-C.../dp/B0136USGHY
If you have that, then there will be #10 AWG gauge wire from the gland that connects all the way to the battery. That wire will be routed through an interior wall, and it's location may once have been marked with a label. The label may have been removed, but the manufacturer could tell you where to find it.
My new rig was wired this way, and I just installed 400 watts of solar on the roof using this wiring.
I doubt that yours is pre-wired, because this video shows NO signs of it. It may have solar on the side or some similar nonsense, but that's relatively useless.
NOW A SIMPLE INSTALL FROM SCRATCH.
1. Locate a convenient place near the front of the camper to run wire INSIDE a closet or cabinet. Based on the video, your wardrobes have a gap between the closet and the night stand. But you could hide wire with wiremold.
https://www.lowes.com/pd/Wiremold-70...B&gclsrc=aw.ds
2. Find a safe place to drill through the SIDEWALL of the camper to get into the closet. You'll need a 1/2" hole. Right in front of the awning looks promising.
3. Install a gland with the wire ports pointing down over the OUTSIDE of this hole. Glands are small. They come in different colors.
https://smile.amazon.com/LINKSOLAR-W...xpY2s9dHJ1ZQ==
The gland will allow the wire to enter the RV with no leaks. Mounting it on the sidewall substantially reduces the chances of leaks.
Note that the corrugated walls of your camper may require a careful choice of gland, OR YOU MAY PREFER TO MOUNT ON THE ROOF and drill through the roof to admit the wire to the closet. See Bullet 4 for roof installation of panels...and use the same butyl tape/dicor techniques to seal the gland to the roof.
4. ASSUMING YOU HAVE A WALKABLE ROOF...your roof sheathing should be 3/8" plywood, and it's strong enough to hold screws. Mount the panels on the roof. Use 1 1/4" drill point, hex head screws. These do less damage to the plywood, because they drill their own holes as they go into the wood.
https://www.lowes.com/pd/Hillman-8-x...B&gclsrc=aw.ds Use Butyl Tape under the panel brackets.
https://www.amazon.com/Dicor-BT-1834.../dp/B001FCB4JS I like the 1" width, but you can use multiple strips of narrower butyl tape. This tape will form a great seal around the scew and squash out as you tighten the screws. Use Dicor Lap Seal on top of the screws and around the brackets.
https://www.amazon.com/Dicor-Self-Le...omotive&sr=1-5 Be generous with the butyl tape and lap sealant. Have you seen the rest of the seals on your roof?
While you're at it, check all your seals and use the lap seal to touch up any questionable areas.
Mount the panels end to end (or side-by-side) so the wires on the panels are close and can be connected to a "Y" parallel connector without having to make special wires.
https://www.amazon.com/BougeRV-Conne...sr=1-4-catcorr "Dress" your wires under the panels and mount the panels close to the front of the camper to minimize the wire run. These heavy wires can run 4 or 5 feet across the roof the gland without any additional anchors. Separate wires can be taped together with electrical tape if you wish. These heavy wires won't get blown around by the wind unless they are very long. Clever routing should make it possible to have only 3 or 4 feet of exposed wire from the panels to the gland.
5. Get GOOD heavy connecting wire. Use #8 wire. This will allow upgrading to 4 panels with essentially no loss. #8 can carry at LEAST 40 amps. That will be important later with the OPTION in bullet point 7. There's no reason to cheap out on wire.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...?ie=UTF8&psc=1 Wire supplied by the solar kit can go thru the gland into the closet. You probably won't have enough to reach the charge controller and battery.
This wire will run from just inside the gland, across the back wall of the closet to the charge controller, and then back to the exterior wall, down the wall, through the wiremold, through the night stand, down through the floor and on to the battery bank. This is very simple method of wiring that eliminates the brain damage of wiring inside walls.
6. You can surface mount the charge controller or you can recess it in the closet wall. My Renology charge controller can be mounted either way, and I recessed mine. To recess the charge controller, get a saw like this one.
https://www.lowes.com/pd/PORTER-CABL...-Kit/999899531 Corded or cordless, a saw like this one makes extremely precise cuts and doesn't tear up the thin paneling walls of your camper. A flush mount is far more attractive, and it keeps that heavy wire hidden inside the closet.
7. OPTION. Consider if you want a small inverter. Your battery bank will run a 500 watt inverter for about 20 minutes without sucking the life out of your battery. 500 watts at 12 volts is 40 AMPS. Run it for an hour, and that is 40 amp hours out of your total available 110 or so usable AH. 20 minutes uses about 15 AH. I use mine to run an electric blanket for a few minutes to take the chill off the bed. But only for a few minutes!
Here's the cool thing. Once you get down into the night stand, you are on the battery side of the charge controller. You can literally run your wires from the charge controller to the inverter and then on to the battery! Easy as can be. The inverter will draw from the battery at night, and it will draw from both the battery and the solar during the day.
DON'T GO NUTS AND BUY A 1000 WATT OR 2000 WATT INVERTER. A 2000 watt inverter will pull 166 amps!! You'd need to wire with welding cable, and your batteries will need to be recharged in about 40 minutes.
Get a generator for large loads.
We use our Electric Blanket at night, during quiet hours. All other 120 volt loads run off the generator.
My inverter:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...?ie=UTF8&psc=1 A whopping $40. I mean, why wouldn't you?
One of these will fit nicely on top of the night stand tucked up against the front wall of the camper...out of the way and handy for the electric blanket. A 25' extension cord can reach the dinette in your camper, but again, you don't want to be running big appliances on your battery. That's what generators are for.
8. Now the "hard" part. You've run your cables down through the floor, caulked the hole, and you have to connect to the battery. Well, connect to the battery. There's no special wiring trick. Just connect to the battery in parallel with your current battery connect cables that go to the converter/charger in the coach.
Plugged into shore power or generator? No problem.
Think of it this way. If you jump start your car, once the engine starts, the charging system (alternator) is pushing charge at the battery and so is the battery/charging system of the car jumping you. If you use a 120 volt battery charger to help jump start your car, the same is true. NO PROBLEM. The solar and shore power charging can charge your battery bank at the same time, no muss no fuss. Both charge controllers - solar and converter - adjust charging to suit the battery bank's state of charge, and they are in no conflict with each other.
Guess what. You're done.
Linear Mode
