12V Water Heater as Diversion Load

msiminoff

Active member
I have ~200W of solar on the roof and on a sunny day my house batteries are usually 100% charged by late morning... so I decided to put the extra solar energy to good use and I built a 150W 12Vdc heating element that screws into the anode port on my Suburban hot water heater. This heating element is operated as a "diversion load" so it only powered after the batteries are fully charged. Because the wattage is low, it only heats the water in the 6gal tank at a rate of 10ºF/hour, but hey... FREE hot water :)
While I was at it, I included a 120Vac 500W heating element (30ºF/hr) so I can heat the tank when I'm connected to shore power or via the inverter while driving. Of course, each heating element is controlled by its own thermostat.
To the best of my knowledge this is the only dual voltage RV water heater ever produced... of course if I need hot water in a hurry it operates quite nicely on LPG too.
Photos are below.
Cheers
-Mark

heater4.jpg


heater6.jpg


heater7.jpg


panel4.jpg


Cheers
-Mark
 

zidaro

Explorer
Mark,
I too am very interested in picking up a couple of these if there is an availability. Please pm me.
 

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