Size of solar maintainer for car battery?
Had a 2.4W panel for $30 or so, on my truck while in storage. Seemed to be adequate at latitude 27 with plenty of sun and almost no clouds. Flat on the roof. Didn't worry much because the battery was...
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I do the same thing here for my F150 Truck. I moved a small solar panel from my jeep days to lay in the windshield area of the truck. This unit has the 12VDC plug on it and plugs into an always hot DC Socket. It is around 5WATTS output when in high sun.
Looks similar to this - google PHOTO.. Mine just lays on the dash - no sucktion cups..
For me this is right on the borderline of being large enough to keep my truck start battery topped off. My battery stays topped off for about a week and then I start seeing the DC VOLTAGE start dropping down to the 12.3-12.4 level when I remove the charge and measure the settled reading. I wish I had the 15WATT version.
I suspect I have two problems with my setup - The windshield is probably killing the high sun and of course the newer trucks have all kinds of parasitic drains to over come... Having the solar panel laying on the dash behind the windsheild is not the best place to use one of these type chargers. Probably never catches maximum charge from the sun...
Roy Ken
Looks similar to this - google PHOTO.. Mine just lays on the dash - no sucktion cups..
For me this is right on the borderline of being large enough to keep my truck start battery topped off. My battery stays topped off for about a week and then I start seeing the DC VOLTAGE start dropping down to the 12.3-12.4 level when I remove the charge and measure the settled reading. I wish I had the 15WATT version.
I suspect I have two problems with my setup - The windshield is probably killing the high sun and of course the newer trucks have all kinds of parasitic drains to over come... Having the solar panel laying on the dash behind the windsheild is not the best place to use one of these type chargers. Probably never catches maximum charge from the sun...
Roy Ken
