Portable Solar Advice Needed

My Advice? Don't make it portable. They tend to grow legs, and you will worry about it while out sightseeing.

If you have a pair of batteries, they will last a entire weekend if they started out the weekend fully charged, and the little light that hits them can add some power to the battery.

Also the roof mounted solar panels will shade any part of the roof that they cover, so cover a lot of the roof, and you will be in the shade all the time!

SunElec.com

You will need a charge controller if the battery is able to be fully charged in one day. But if you keep a close eye on the battery voltage, and stop charging at around 13 volts, you can get away without the charge controller.

Worst case if you let a battery sit at 15 volts for a couple of hours while is a AGM will get destroyed, a sealed lead acid will get destroyed. A golf cart battery will need a few ounces of water, but will get equalized, and be good as new. (given that you would be using a 100 watt solar panel). So it would be possible to charge a 200 amp hour battery bank without a controller while camping and using power all day long to run things like the CO meter, propane detector and refrigerator that will consume about 35 AH daily, or use more than 1 amp per hour of your charge going into the battery, so not all 100 watts will go to charging the battery anyway! And a 100 watt solar panel will barely make up for the 35 AH used overnight to run the CO meter, propane detector and refrigerator anyway.

Have fun camping! Don't think about the solar. I have a 415 rated watt solar system installed in my RV since 1999, and it shades the RV, charges the batteries, and works great!

Fred.

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I would think you would always want a SOLAR CONTROLLER that produces SMART MODE Battery Charging type DC VOLTAGES just like your on-board smart mode converter/charger does to keep your batteries charged.

You also have to be concerned not allowing your battery to be discharged by the solar panel when the SUN is not present. The SOLAR CONTROLLER prevents all of this from happening and gives you a great reference point to observe what is happening when being charged...

Unless you go SOLAR BIG TIME about all you can expect from the solar panels is to top off your battery system during the HIGH SUN DAY. Once your battery drain overcomes the DC CURRENT being produced by the solar panels the batteries start being discharged.

Just keep in mind that a typical 120WATT SOLAR PANEL when in high sun will only produce around 5-6AMPS DC Current to be used for charging batteries.

To re-charge batteries in a quick three hour time frame you will want to see around 17-20AMPS of DC Charge CURRENT for each battery in the bank.

I have been camping off the power grid pretty heavy since 2009 and know what to expect with my 255AHs battery performance. I recharge my batteries each morning at 8AM when allowed to run my Generator by connecting my 30AMP Shore Power cable to my 2KW generator 120VAC Receptacle using a RV 30A-15A long adapter. I am just now staring to think adding some solar panels will help me out in getting my battery bank up to their 90% charge state each day before I start using them again after dark. If I don't start out each camping evening with at least a 90% charge state it usually gets dark on me around 10-11 PM at night. I want my batteries to drop down to around 12.0VDC by 8Am each morning. I will draw around 20AMPS of DC CURRENT between the 6PM to 11PM time frame each night running our toys.

Solar Panels will help me out alot but are not the total answer on my somewhat high DC POWER consumption each evening unless I add several hundred WATTS of solar panels.

Just my thoughts here...

Roy Ken

I need it for when I'm parked in the shade.

Yes, but if the existing controller has enough capacity you might simply add another identical panel in parallel.

Well, that's a given LOL! But is it just as easy as hooking up to the batteries, etc?

Hi,

No, you would need to have a charge controller between the panel and the battery bank.