Solar Panels: How many watts?

hedgehopper wrote:
How many watts of solar panels would I need to keep two 12-volt batteries charged? I don’t know the specs on the batteries. I’m looking for a ballpark number.

What about portable panels vs those mounted on the roof?

Keeping them charged means they are already charged and you are "maintaining" them. There are solar trickle chargers for that.

If you mean while camping, you don't give any scenario to answer the question.

Generally, you first need an idea how many hours of sunshine you will get in a day, and how many amp hours of battery bank you need to restore daily. Divide the AH by the hours and that's how many amps.

You can find the amps a panel will do at high noon--eg 100w does 6 amps. But the sun goes up and down so you need an average amps over the whole day. Pick a number. That times the hours per day is your expected AH haul.

Get enough solar so you can haul in more than you use daily. Oops except is that in summer or winter? Enough for winter is more than you need for summer and enough for summer is not enough for winter.