5 watt solar panel
I have a question about my 5 watt solar panel on the A/C. My 5 watt solar panel on the top of my 2000 Bounder 34D was broken (glass was smashed) and not working. I purchased a new 5 watt solar pane...
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Most of them that I'm familiar with are 8 watts. That is 0.667 amps in strong sunlight. Worthless.
To see if it's doing anything, unplug from shore power. Wait 20 minutes for surface charge to drop to normal. Disconnect the battery negative and measure the voltage. Reconnect the battery negative while there's nice strong sunlight. Measure the voltage across the 12 V battery (or batteries).
If it's over 13V, it's actually doing something! Most likely though, it'll just be 0.2 to 0.4 volts over the voltage you measured previously.
Reconnect shore power. Measure the chassis battery voltage. Is it higher now? Than your RV has a Trik-L-Start or similar device and will keep your chassis battery charged when you plug into shore power...and the alternator will do that on the road. If it stays the same, or slowly drops, you should consider that device to keep your chassis battery charged. The solar panel won't do much in fighting all the parasitic loads normally on that battery.
To see if it's doing anything, unplug from shore power. Wait 20 minutes for surface charge to drop to normal. Disconnect the battery negative and measure the voltage. Reconnect the battery negative while there's nice strong sunlight. Measure the voltage across the 12 V battery (or batteries).
If it's over 13V, it's actually doing something! Most likely though, it'll just be 0.2 to 0.4 volts over the voltage you measured previously.
Reconnect shore power. Measure the chassis battery voltage. Is it higher now? Than your RV has a Trik-L-Start or similar device and will keep your chassis battery charged when you plug into shore power...and the alternator will do that on the road. If it stays the same, or slowly drops, you should consider that device to keep your chassis battery charged. The solar panel won't do much in fighting all the parasitic loads normally on that battery.
