100W Poly panel in Home Depot
Don't have a use for solar that small :), but I think the price isn't too bad. You'll have to order, they don't stock it in the aisles. Free shipping, and it is Poly. 100W
Forum Discussion
I bought 4 of these for $100 a piece a couple months back thanks to information provided by thoughtful folks on these forums. It was a 1 day sale, and I impulse bought prior to figuring out what I really wanted to install. I ended up going with a bogart SC 2030 controller and Trimetric 2030 monitor to control it. Then decided to add 1 more panel which I bought at $125, giving my 500 watts of solar on the roof..
These smaller panels work great for the way I stair step flat mounted them down the back of my 5er where it slopes from the forward bedroom are to the rear cap. I used taller home built bracket in the back than I did in the front. If the panel is too long the rear would be quite high. I didn't compensate with brackets for the slope from the curve of the rooftop, leaving that slight angle for drainage. So far I've been though hail storm with them installed while we were in Estes Park Colorado, and they held up well, and I haven't noticed any issues related to highway travel so they appear to be a good fit for my righ.
I wired my panels in parallel, combiner box with fuses on the roof, Controller etc in the fwd generator bay. I'm currently running 3 grp 24 batteries in parallel as I already had them and won't be upgrading to 4 6volt batteries till next year when I plan to retire and will be doing a whole lot more camping off grid. My summertime charging current to the batteries is generally 24 to 25 amps for an hour or two during peak sun, tapering off slowiy on either side of that. That said I have found most of the places I have camped so far have had significant shade for large parts of the day, and more often than not it starts clouding up significantly by early afternoon with more thunderstorms than I'm used to for this time of the year. I've ordered two more of the panels, one of which I will put up on top of the fiver to take it up to 600 watts of flat mount solar. I'm not the sort who can be bothered to climb up and down on the roof every time I move the camper, and I'm not really inclined to try to position the rig based solely on the best solar capture so I didn't bother with making adjustable brackets.
These smaller panels work great for the way I stair step flat mounted them down the back of my 5er where it slopes from the forward bedroom are to the rear cap. I used taller home built bracket in the back than I did in the front. If the panel is too long the rear would be quite high. I didn't compensate with brackets for the slope from the curve of the rooftop, leaving that slight angle for drainage. So far I've been though hail storm with them installed while we were in Estes Park Colorado, and they held up well, and I haven't noticed any issues related to highway travel so they appear to be a good fit for my righ.
I wired my panels in parallel, combiner box with fuses on the roof, Controller etc in the fwd generator bay. I'm currently running 3 grp 24 batteries in parallel as I already had them and won't be upgrading to 4 6volt batteries till next year when I plan to retire and will be doing a whole lot more camping off grid. My summertime charging current to the batteries is generally 24 to 25 amps for an hour or two during peak sun, tapering off slowiy on either side of that. That said I have found most of the places I have camped so far have had significant shade for large parts of the day, and more often than not it starts clouding up significantly by early afternoon with more thunderstorms than I'm used to for this time of the year. I've ordered two more of the panels, one of which I will put up on top of the fiver to take it up to 600 watts of flat mount solar. I'm not the sort who can be bothered to climb up and down on the roof every time I move the camper, and I'm not really inclined to try to position the rig based solely on the best solar capture so I didn't bother with making adjustable brackets.
