Question Solar panel for charging batteries

[Mister K]

To anyone maintaining battery charge using solar panel.. what wattage panel are y'all using? RV storage cost increasing and they've been charging extra for trickle charger so thinking of using solar. Thanks

 

[Neal]

How many batteries, what amp hour capacity? Any other loads such as refrigerator, inverter outlets, etc?

 

[Kevin D Pem]

A solar maintainer would keep the sensors running, and batteries maintained, as long as you have shut everything else down.
Personally I love over kill. I would use a 100 watt panel with cheap pwm controller for the job.

 

[Mister K]

Thanks for the replies... I have 2 batteries. I'm wanting to keep my batteries charged while keeping it in a covered storage. I shut everything down while in storage.

 

[B52Bombardier1]

For storage purposes with our travel trailer, I use two out of the four panels plus the charge controller from a roughly $150.00 Harbor Freight 100 watt solar panel kit. I aim one of these panels towards the morning sun and the other towards the late day sun. With a healthy battery, I could still pump water, run the lighting and the propane leak detector is on - I can't turn that off.

And if I chose to, I could run the refrigerator on propane in conjunction with 12 volt support from the solar-charged battery but I usually don't.

Works great.

Rick

 

[Kevin D Pem]

For storage purposes with our travel trailer, I use two out of the four panels plus the charge controller from a roughly $150.00 Harbor Freight 100 watt solar panel kit. I aim one of these panels towards the morning sun and the other towards the late day sun. With a healthy battery, I could still pump water, run the lighting and the propane leak detector is on - I can't turn that off.

And if I chose to, I could run the refrigerator on propane in conjunction with 12 volt support from the solar-charged battery but I usually don't.

Works great.

Rick

For those unfamiliar with solar, all the panels on one controller will be brought down to the lowest producing panel. Depending on panel quality, the panel faced out of the sun may even get hot enough to discolor over time.

The above setup will work fine if two controllers are used.

 

[Mister K]

Thank you all again for the info. I think I know what to get or do now. I have solar on the unit but no access to the sun so I've been using the trickle charger. Thanks again.