I’ve long been a sceptic about the use of solar power on motorhomes; I couldn’t see the point in all that extra weight on the van roof just for a little bit of power. However, the use of a portable solar panel for emergency use might be a good idea. To this end, I bought a Renogy 100Watt folding solar panel and a Victron MPPT 75\/15 solar charge controller, and plumbed the controller through the EBL as an ‘ancillary charger’.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Renogy panel does not have a controller fitted as most do, which is why I chose it. The Victron charge controller that we bought has a Bluetooth interface so can be monitored at a distance, albeit short.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The first real opportunity to try the solar panel was June 10-12th, during our stay in the New Forest when it was nice and sunny.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On the morning of Thursday 10th, our battery capacity was showing as 90% so I deployed the panel. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I was staggered. The panel harvested up to 123Watts and provided a charge current of around 9Amps! As the battery charged, the current dropped off but remained around 7A for some time. Within a few hours the charger controller had dropped back to its ‘float’ mode and the batteries were fully charged. Although, when on ‘float’ charge the panel only harvested around 70W.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The way in which the controller is connected to the EBL means that I can only charge the habitation battery. A modification I will make is to fabricate a splitter cable that allows the charger to connect to either the habitation battery or the van starter battery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I really must say that I am hugely impressed with the panel\/charger combination but am still not going to have solar panels fitted on the van roof.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I’ve long been a sceptic about the use of solar power on motorhomes; I couldn’t see the point in all that extra weight on the van roof just for a little bit of power. However, the use of a portable solar panel for emergency use might be a good idea. To this end, I bought … Continue reading “Solar Power”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldofwills.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5685"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldofwills.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldofwills.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldofwills.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldofwills.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5685"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/worldofwills.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5685\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5690,"href":"https:\/\/worldofwills.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5685\/revisions\/5690"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldofwills.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5685"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldofwills.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5685"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldofwills.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5685"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}