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JAYCO Motorhome disappoints, then gets 10,000 kVA Power, Battery and tank Monitoring Upgrade

Jayco Motorhome Power Energy and Tank Monitoring Upgrade
Jayco Motorhome Onan Genset in will not operate all electric appliance plus air con

Jayco Motorhome builders are good at what they do... build motorhomes. But they don't excel at power, lithium batteries and tank monitoring.

In this top of range motorhome, thry install this genset. But it does not solve the problem of running Air-con, Induction (standard in this model, and the electric oven. To run these thress need around 6000W of electrical power. The genset just keeps cutting out.

Then there is the problem of noise. At 68dBA, that the equivalent of living near a highway 30m away. The owners just could not sleep at night.

Finally, the problem of right under your motorhome is a petrol powered device. There is the option of Diesel, but if a petrol unit, its a potential bomb and if diesel, the smell can be annoying.

In this motorhome, to solve the problem of insufficient power and energy, Jayco fitted a 3.5kVA genset under the rear. Running that is deafening at night and drove this new motorhome builder to call Safiery.

Jayco Motorhome Main Display

Water is a valuable resource, just like energy. This motorhome has 240L of fresh water, Thats not a lot. And so monitoring the water tank levels is very important.

Lippert are a respected pioneer of electric slide-outs for motorhomes and RV's. But there water tank monitoring system is appalling. Its just not their field of expertise.

Listen to the owner complain that the tank monitoring was "all over the place". It showed empty when full and full when half full. It just could not be relied on.

In this motorhome, to solve this problem of tank monitoring, Safiery installed 4 of the STAR-Tank radar tank level sensors, accurate to 1mm in these 250mm deep tanks.  All 4 were installed in les than 10 mins. They are battery operated long range bluetooth transmitting to the Victron Touch 70 Screen.

Jayco Motorhome Energy Analysis

Safiery start every project with an energy analysis. This starts with a listing of the appliances that will be used and sizing the air-con on an hourly rate basis.

Then the replenishment energy is assessed to see if this can keep up with the energy used. In this example there is a family of 4 people. 7,937kWh a day is not excessive for 4 people. We have "super-bold" user reaching 10kWh for 2 people.

We work on 3 layers of conditions for replenishment:

  1. Perfect weather: 20% of time
  2. Typical Cloudy Day: 60% of time
  3. Rain, heavy overcast: 20% of time

We just could not get enough solar on the roof to sustain th energy use while not plugged in. There is the option of portable solar but the owner, didn't want the hassle. Fortunately the the Safiery Scotty AI DC DC come to the rescue and delivers around 2,700W of charging per hour to replenish the batteries.

Jayco Motorhome Equipment Fit-out

Here is what we installed:

10,000kVA Inverter/Charger

6 x 2500Wh Meteor Lithium Batteries. They can sustain the 10,000kW demand of the Inverter.

Scotty AI 250A DC DC which auto-tuned to the Iveco Motorhome factory alternator.

Replaced the Projecta 30A DC DC with a Victron Energy 50A DC DC to replenish the existing 2 x 100Ah 12V lithium batteries. 

The DC DC charging was setup so the 12V Lithium batteries are charged at the same time the 48V Lithium is charged.

4 x STAR-Tank Radar tank Measuring battery operated sensors.

Victron Energy Cerbo GX and Touch 70 Screen.

2 x 400W Sunpower High Efficiency Solar Panels. We just could not get more than this because of the cluttered roof space at the rear.

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