Solar power

[dannie]

Any body used solar power to run there leisure battery on there boat when not hooked up to shore power. and what size panel would they recommend for a 48hr static (no engine running to recharge there battery) session running lights,kettle,t.v etc. Which brand is best ?

 

[Wiggo]

That's going to be big and expensive, I think...

A 150W solar panel from Maplin is £799. What would that get you? 150W would give you just over 12A at 12V in bright sunlight. Let's guesstimate that on a cracker of a day, you get 8 hours at full whack, and 8 hours at half power. That's 144Ah of charge per day, being very optimistic. If I were being realistic, I'd say you might get half that figure on a 'normal' day. Again, I'd guesstimate that you'd only be able to stuff say 2/3 of that into the batteries, so you'd be lucky to get 48Ah per day of charge out of an £800 panel.

What will that get you? Well, a fridge will use 30Ah per day (at a guess, maybe more if you open the door a lot), half a dozen 10W halogen bulbs buring for 4 hours each evening will use another 24Ah, your TV for an hour or two in the evening may take another 5-10 Ah, so it will quickly add up to a big load to supply from solar only.

And don't even think about an electric kettle...

 

[Assassin]

The problem with solar power is that it only provides tiny amounts of usable power, great if you have to leave navigation lights on and they are LED, but no good for anything else. You also have to consider the cost of the regulator/charge controller and all the necessary cables, mounting the unit, and remember they are not designed for marine environments.

Technology moves on; as time moves on they will become much better and much cheaper as demand will dictate this and engineering will deliver.

 

[ontheplane]

I've only used it to keep batteries topped up when away from boat and no shorepower for weeks on end - useless to top up batteries that are being used unless you had a solar panel the size of essex!