Fixed or portable solar?

DanNJanice wrote:
Regarding portable panels.
If I had to do it again I would make my array out of two semi-flexible panels that are out now. They are more expensive, but also much lighter and thinner. I figure I could make a folding set of panels, with wood backing, that would weight half as much as the rigid panels.

I am in the process of doing this right now. They were right at $1 per watt for the panels. I have two 120 watt panels and I've used narrow aluminum angle iron for the framing. They weigh far less than 1/2 the weight of glass panels. They are rather tall (each panel is 52 inches by 22 inches). I found that they fit well in a long dress bag for transport.

Only time will tell if these panels hold up as well as rigid glass panels. We shall see.

Our previous trailer had 2 100w and one 60w mono panels flat mounted with 2 6v 225AH batteries. I had no issues staying charged with moderate power use and a decent amount of mid day sun.
Besides the physical size of a 300w panel, the problem I see running a single 300w panel is shading. If even one corner of that panel has shade the whole thing produces no power. You would be better of running two panels in parallel or a combination of 4 panels in series parallel, (depending on weather you are running 12 or 24v setup). This way if one of the sets is shaded the other set will still produce power.

Depends on what type of panel you have. If you have crystalline, then the more direct the sunlight and angle the better, and it does not like clouds so much and shade even less.

I have a portable 100W panel I use, but also another permanent 100W on the roof. They are photovoltaic thin film, so much lighter and durable than glass, and better than a similarly rated crystalline module because it works well regardless the angle of the sun, but also better in heat, clouds, rain and will work in partial shade.

Anyway, I use portable to also charge my trolling motor batteries, or attach to the camper when I need more power... Either way, when/if I get my TT, they both will go on the roof...

I have two 150w panels on my roof. It does cause you to be selective about campsites so you have sunlight. The Samlex Set up I have seems to pull a charge out of the fog just fine. After a foggy day of charging when the sun goes down I will usually see the charge is full. Even clouds unless they are real nasty dark wet clouds. For us the only time I would be looking for a shaded camp site is in the summer.....and in the summer I wouldn't be using hardly any battery in the day or the night. Reason for that is we don't have an inverter and don't use any 110v appliances at all while camping. Just lights and in real cold weather we use the furnace to keep the trailer between 55 to 60 degrees at night.

For years I used the larger panels portable and there is just nothing like catching the earliest rays of the day and getting full power until the sun goes down. That said, I dreamed of the day I could get my panels mounted and not deal with it.

The thing is after watching the effect of being able to track the sun early and late, it is almost painful to know the light is there but the roof system isn't going to really get going for hours after sun rise.

So now I have a roof system AND a portable as well. My portable is mounted onto the roof of the truck and tilts. I can move the truck to keep it lined up during the day, it isn't going to blow over or walk away and I don't have to lift it or store it where it will interfere with using the trailer. It also charges the batteries as I am on the road. It really is the best of both types.

Go with portable until you get bored with it.

I am wanting to put around 400Watts of panels on my OFF-ROAD POPUP trailer. I have the space on the front part on both sides of the fantastic fan and then a larger panel on the rear mounted across the roof behind the centered air conditioner. I need to have something to produce around 20AMPS of DC Power to charge my batteries during high sun...

After adding up the weight I don't think my POPUP motor will lift my roof up with all of the panels added haha... Going to add too much weight. I really should get rid of the Air Conditioner that I very seldom use... Most of my camping is OFF-ROAD off my batteries.

I was thinking I could mount the larger panel across the rear after I lifted the roof but that might be another problem in itself...

So now I am thinking maybe two 100Watt or 120WAtt panels on the roof and then get one of those two 100Watt portable folding panels. I believe I can rig up a quick setup on the roof if I like to use it there or just have long cables for it and use around the ground to follow the high sun...

Security of the folding panels is another thing to worry about I guess... Used to do that with my SAT DISH sitting outside all the time. Then I started sitting it on the hard folding panels on my truck bed snapped in place. That also made me put the dish up when I had to leave the camping spot. Guess I could do the same thing with the folding solar panels...

My truck will have additional batteries in the bed as well to support my Radio Ops so maybe this would be useful for trickle charging them when I am just using my truck off-road...

Roy Ken

Our is a fixed high voltage, usable voltage when shaded. Portable more likely to walk off, firmly attached with tamper resistant screws/bolts not in the Harbor Freight tamper resistant bit set.

I have been using roof-mounted panels for 5 years. I camp in shade, and still have full batteries every night. However, while I have camped in full shade often, it may not be as heavy a canopy as the northwest and northeast have.

2 100w panels, 2 110 aH batteries. I don't want to mess with portable, especially if we are not in camp to discourage them from walking off. If they are not deployed, they are worthless. At least my mounted panels can gather power while I am away.

My 2 cents

I was going to go portable but now that I have 400w on the roof I can just enjoy all that power with no extra work. Comes in real handy in storage when I leave my fridge on without worrying about running down the batts. Not sure I would leave a portable setup out in that situation.

we rarely camp in shaded areas so thats a big factor in our setup choice.

Daryll