Solar Kits

[fridayman]

Does anyone on here have experience with solar charging kits?

 

[ignat]

No experience myself, but either a solar kit or an additional extra large battery (or two!)is on my shopping list. Leaning towards a solar kit. Pricey though?

 

[sae70]

I'm sure that I've read in the past that a solar charging kit is not worth a bean in terms of cost verses output and are not worth fitting

 

[fridayman]

I need to learn a bit more about the technology, and what impact shadows have on certain types of panels... But it seems like an 80W panel with a charge controller would be able to keep my 80L Engel running in a sunny place. The costs seem to vary a lot for what appear to be similar setups though, from £300 up to £1200, and they all have 20-25 yr warranties on the panels and 5-10yr warranties on the controllers.

I have also started looking at wind turbines. There are some amazingly efficient setups available for £300-400 that deliver a lot more charge/£. While these can work in relatively low wind conditions, they do need wind. The biggest downside is that the turbines are fragile compared to solar kits, and a lower power solar kit is always going to be more useful than a broken wind turbine...

 

[Jon Wildsmith]

I have no idea if any of their panels are of the type you'd be looking for but from time to time Maplin have some good deals and they do a whole range of sizes and outputs. A few years ago I bought a 13w panel for £25 or something stupid like that to keep our caravan battery topped up when it's in storage and noted the 60w & 80w ones were really cheap but more than I needed at the time.

 

[AndyCook]

Getting 4kw for our house
but at bit heavy and large for a landcruiser roof

 

[Crispin]

Shadows are a pain. In a test I did with two 90w panels, a hand shadow kills output of the panel. Think it was just under half when in full sun

Get an even amount of panels and put them in parallel.

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[Scott]

I have a 40W solar panel on the roof, with a solar charge controller, connected to a yellow top optima, which runs my engel and aux lighting when parked up for long periods.

I got it on offer from Maplins for £106, and I thought at that price it's a worth an experiment ( http://mobile.maplin.co.uk/module.aspx?moduleno=510795 ). At 14.7kg it's a little on the heavy side, and measuring 1253x643x37 it takes up a bit of space on the roof, but every mod is a compromise.

I haven't done any specific testing to measure the full benefit, but whenever I've stuck a meter on the battery you can see it's charging the battery, and the charge controller has LEDs on it to indicate when the battery is either charged, charging, or low.

Due to it being an 'amorphous' weatherproof solar panel, it seems to charge the battery from dusk till dawn. I have seen the charging led on before 5am in the summer, and late into the evening.

I do know that when parked up on baking hot summer days, the engel would drag the yellow top down to 8.6V after 2.5 days. This year I was parked up for 3.5 days and the fridge was still happily running away. So yes it does make the aux battery last longer, but how long it'll last till it can't run the fridge depends on so many variables, I couldn't give an exact figure.

Variables are battery capacity, solar panel size/efficiency, size/fridge current draw, is the fridge in a thermal jacket, are the car windows tinted or reflected, how hot is the air temp etc........

I very happy with mine, and at the price I thought it's worth ago. It's been on the roof for 5 months and has survived some encounters with tree branches, and some vibrations from offroad driving at speed. If I was buying again, I would look at the new ultra thin solar panels that are appearing on the market, but the price of them may not be so favourable, yet.

Hope that's of some help.

Cheers.

 

[Crispin]

Other than a sharp blow, they are tougher than they look. Ive walked on mine, dropped one and all is well. They about 1.8 by about 800.

You can now get flexible roll ones which I believe are less effective but can contour to the bonnet or roof.

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