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ulvik's avatar
ulvik
Explorer
Aug 24, 2017

Solar panels mounted on truck Tonneau cover?

Plan on keeping our current Travel Trailer about another year before we upgrade to a larger 5th wheel. With that in mind I am looking to install a Renogy 200 watt solar kit for our current travels and instead of mounting the 2 panels on the roof of the TT only to replace them or remove them next year I would like to mount them on my Tonneau cover. Has anyone done this and what if any drawbacks?

13 Replies

  • We have a large solar panel mounted on our TT which did a decent job but I wanted to add more watts and wanted to forego adding another to our TT roof so I picked up a Renogy solar suitcase which out performs the larger solar panel on the roof since it can be angled and repositioned throughout the day. If I'm staying put for the day, I have positioned our Renogy solar suitcase on our metal rolling truck bed cover a time or two, works fine and easily connects to our battery bank.

    Only problem I had once was we went for a hike and when we came back the Renogy solar suitcase had been blown off by a gust of wind and was laying about 10' away from our truck. I thought it was a goner, much to my surprise I just dusted it off and reconnected to battery bank and it was performing as if nothing occurred. Renogy is good quality stuff in our opinion. Have done it a few times since but for the most part when the Renogy solar suitcase is deployed we just place it on the ground.
  • I think the drawback is having to keep batteries in the truck and connecting the truck to the trailer when at camp.
  • One draw back may be ( truck out sight seeing during day, no charge going to TT batteries ). JMHO

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