Solar power

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Joined
Mar 5, 2018
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I am looking into getting a solar battery charger for my two 6 volts in the cab of my RV. I have my batteries hooked up in a series giving me 12 volts. Anyone out there have a preferred brand they stand by? My goal is a solar panel, maintainer and hookups that I can attach to the batteries and other devices (i.e. phone, laptop, etc).
 
I just purchased this off of Amazon.  Other than the spindly legs, I think it is very well made:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01M4NH9ES/ref=od_aui_detailpages00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Folds into a pretty handy suitcase package.  Uses the monocrystaline panels instead of polycrystaline.  Supposedly the mono's are better than the poly's.

I hooked it up to my spare battery to test it (I haven't used it in the field yet).  Battery showed 12.4 volts standing alone and 13.8 volts when I attached the solar panel.  This was in late afternoon Rocky Mountain sunshine though.

Cheers,

Dan K.
 
Hi Joe. You're pretty much going to find similar performance specs on panels with the same rated output, so if you stay with the name brands, you won't notice any real difference in reliability or output. Prices will be similar too.

When going solar, some important things to know are... your battery bank's amp hour capacity, how much power you typically consume in a 24 hour period, where you're usually going to camp and what exactly do you want your solar system to do.

If you want your system to fully recharge your battery bank each day, you'll need to know all those things I mentioned. If a partial charge is what you're looking for, only you'll know how much is acceptable. They make specialty chargers for cell phones and the like, but RV solar panels can't be hooked directly to those kinds of devices. The panel(s) will connect to your RV's battery, and your devices will charge via their own charging adapters.

Kev
 

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