Very helpful article for sure. I went with the Goal Zero Yeti Core. https://a.co/d/iWJY4Pw At $899 it's $400 less than the Goal Zero Yeti 1000x with a few less bells and whistles like app monitoring and expansion capability. Both have the Anderson PowerPole outputs which I was after. Both are NMC. Note that on the Goal Zero the Anderson port is in a vertical configuration instead of horizontal. Happily I discovered that you can easily uncouple the positive and negative ends of an Anderson Powerpole male plug and reconfigure them into a vertical position. I successfully added the Anderson Powerpole plug onto my Dometic cord.
For solar panels, I went with two of the lightweight XSTAR SP100 panels. One to keep the Goal Zero topped off and one to keep the camper house battery topped off. They can also be daisy chained for 200 watts of charging. XTAR SP100: Portable &Foldable 100W Adjustable Solar Panel. With John's appropriate note of caution on reviews, this panel has gotten a lot of positive feedback. Note that these panels do not have a solar controller. If your camper does not have a controller you will need to use an external one. I use this one and it works great.
https://a.co/d/8t9Djx7
Together with my new Victron 100Ah AGM Super Cycle Battery I think I am finally set! It has been a journey and frankly, a bit of obsession! My wife is relieved this is over, ha ha!
Going to say again, do not get the Jackery to run the Dometic. The cigarette lighter plug will not stay connected even when stationary! I think there is a design flaw with their socket size even though they won't admit it! Happily I was able to sell both my Jackery and 130 watt glass (and very heavy) Zamp panel on Craigslist.
For the record and just in case anyone is doing the same, I ran into a couple of snags charging the Goal Zero with my auxiliary line on my truck coming from a Victron DC to DC charge controller. The input voltage display on the Goal Zero kept scrolling in increments from 0 to 90 and back to 0 again.
Issue one is that my Victron DC to DC charge controller on my truck ran into a conflict with the Goal Zero charge controller. The solution was to program the Victron as “Power Supply” instead of “Charger.”
Issue two was that the model 12-12-30 DC to DC charger model that I had could be programmed to send 10-15 volts. Turns out 15 volts was for some reason insufficient to charge the Goal Zero. I replaced it with a model 12-24-15 that can be programmed to send 20-30 volts.
https://a.co/d/e0FOMuV
After some YouTube research (see video below) I programmed the new charger as follows:
Function: Power Supply
Output: Enabled
Output Voltage: 20.0 Volts
Input voltage lockout: 13.2 & 13.4
The Goal Zero now shows a steady 203 watts of input voltage at idle. Very happy and plan on using my previous charger to replace the OEM battery isolator in the camper as previously described by Rotus.
I should add that Goal Zero support was of no help, They said their battery would not work with a DC to DC charger. I refused to accept that answer and found the solution via this gentlemen’s video for which I am very grateful. Wanted to give him credit:
-Randy
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