Sagefemme
Senior Member
I am in Arizona on the road, currently in Sedona but been a few other places in the south. Seeing amazing birds and taking amazing hikes. HOWEVER we are having electrical issues. It started with the solar panels delivering a small amount of power first thing in the morning but every day quitting after a short period of time. It also charges briefly in the evening. This has been consistent for a week. At first I think the truck alternator was charging the batteries and we were doing enough driving to get by. Now it seems the truck is not charging the batteries either.
We went to a random RV dealer that had a service department. It was 4:45 in the afternoon and they looked at me like I was crazy walking in without an appointment (they were booked out for weeks) but I guess I looked sad enough that they took pity on me and took a look.
Their conclusion was that the solar charge controller was bad, and they did not know where in Tucson one could get a Zamp solar charge controller. Order one on Amazon, they said. Not so helpful given we weren't planning to stay in town. But they were very nice and didn't charge us anything (shout out to. ).
Then we decided to get someone to look more comprehensively, and met a mobile RV service guy in the parking lot of a Red Robin. He, strangely, didn't have much of anything for tools with him but did a bunch of stuff with a multimeter (kinda the same routine as the first guy) and came to the same conclusion. While I was waiting for him I spoke to Zamp on the phone and they said they could ship a new controller to me overnight, but to please have the service guy check the power coming out of the panel, and a few other specific things. He couldn't check the panel right at the panel because the wiring was not accessible but he did check the ancillary solar port on the back of the camper (flatbed Hawk). He got 19.25 volts. The other places he checked he also thought were fine. I didn't have a ton of confidence in him but now it seemed worthwhile to order a new solar charge controller, which I did, and which we installed, and got exactly the same results: small amount of power comes in first thing in the morning and last at night, but it amounts to almost nothing. The rest of the day we get 0.0 volts and lots of times a red light is flashing which I guess means "weak solar" and "not charging." Again, we have been doing plenty of driving and when we park our batteries are at 12.0 or even 11.9 which I don't want! We have turned off the fridge a few times to conserve since that's just about all we use, anyway.
We are at a campsite with electric right now, so the controller is acting fine and says the batteries are at 13.6.
Everything was working fine for the first 4 or 5 days of this trip. I am not well versed enough to do much in the way of diagnosing or fixing, but I could go buy a multimeter if anyone had a brilliant idea. I really wanted to be mostly boon docking and getting away from people on this trip, so it's disappointing. We are still having fun but I'm tired of worrying about this and with spending time in cities looking for solutions or waiting for packages to be delivered (that's another whole saga).
Does anyone have a recommendation for someone good in Phoenix or Las Vegas or thereabouts who might be able to help us? I get the impression RV fixers don't always know electricity stuff very well.
Thanks all who may reply!


We went to a random RV dealer that had a service department. It was 4:45 in the afternoon and they looked at me like I was crazy walking in without an appointment (they were booked out for weeks) but I guess I looked sad enough that they took pity on me and took a look.
Their conclusion was that the solar charge controller was bad, and they did not know where in Tucson one could get a Zamp solar charge controller. Order one on Amazon, they said. Not so helpful given we weren't planning to stay in town. But they were very nice and didn't charge us anything (shout out to. ).
Then we decided to get someone to look more comprehensively, and met a mobile RV service guy in the parking lot of a Red Robin. He, strangely, didn't have much of anything for tools with him but did a bunch of stuff with a multimeter (kinda the same routine as the first guy) and came to the same conclusion. While I was waiting for him I spoke to Zamp on the phone and they said they could ship a new controller to me overnight, but to please have the service guy check the power coming out of the panel, and a few other specific things. He couldn't check the panel right at the panel because the wiring was not accessible but he did check the ancillary solar port on the back of the camper (flatbed Hawk). He got 19.25 volts. The other places he checked he also thought were fine. I didn't have a ton of confidence in him but now it seemed worthwhile to order a new solar charge controller, which I did, and which we installed, and got exactly the same results: small amount of power comes in first thing in the morning and last at night, but it amounts to almost nothing. The rest of the day we get 0.0 volts and lots of times a red light is flashing which I guess means "weak solar" and "not charging." Again, we have been doing plenty of driving and when we park our batteries are at 12.0 or even 11.9 which I don't want! We have turned off the fridge a few times to conserve since that's just about all we use, anyway.
We are at a campsite with electric right now, so the controller is acting fine and says the batteries are at 13.6.
Everything was working fine for the first 4 or 5 days of this trip. I am not well versed enough to do much in the way of diagnosing or fixing, but I could go buy a multimeter if anyone had a brilliant idea. I really wanted to be mostly boon docking and getting away from people on this trip, so it's disappointing. We are still having fun but I'm tired of worrying about this and with spending time in cities looking for solutions or waiting for packages to be delivered (that's another whole saga).
Does anyone have a recommendation for someone good in Phoenix or Las Vegas or thereabouts who might be able to help us? I get the impression RV fixers don't always know electricity stuff very well.
Thanks all who may reply!


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