Hello all,
We are thinking of non-hook up CL sites for caravan leisure battery charging (and maybe other possibilities unknown) but not sure which solar panel to go for.
Budget around £150 (£200 at a push) and didn't want a massively heavy item. Perhaps a 100 Watts.
Does anyone have any recommendations please?
Cheers,
Richard
It’s a good time to be getting into solar, kit has come down in price quite a bit in price, apart from batteries that is, but I would seriously think about upgrading from Lead Acid to Lithium Iron, a drop in replacement 100Ah LiFeP04 will give you more capacity than a 120Ah LA battery, and last ten times longer.
I have just bought a 120Ah LA battery, but will be going for a 100Ah LiFeP04 when funds allow, I added to that a 600 watt inverter, so now have a mini power station.
I can run a 550 watt kettle of my little system, which is great for of grid use, and takes about 6 minutes to get to a rolling boil from cold for 500 mls of water, and that takes about 5% out of my battery.
A great kettle for use with a solar system is the Bestron AWK810, just 500watt, but not easy to get hold of in the U.K. believe me as I have tried.
I fitted a battery monitor, £28 from China, which keeps you informed on the battery capacity, you should not run a LA battery to below 50%, otherwise you will seriously shorten it’s life or destroy it, with a LiFeP04 battery you can run it down to zero, due to in built BMS.
Next step is to get a couple of solar panels, so I am thinking 200 watt, with MPPT controller to feed the battery.
Check out Will Prowse on youtube, some really good info on small solar set ups.
I use a 150w folding panel which does me, so far 15 nights away and keeps the 110amp battery charged up for the caravans 12v systems. Gas for fridge, hot water and cooking which is cheap using a Safefill refillable gas cylinder, 15ltrs/8.6kg of gas cost around £8.50 when I fill it at my local Morrisons garage. I plug a USB (3 socket) adaptor into the caravan 12v socket to charge up phones, watches, bike lights and GPS.
Our van came with a Truma 100watt panel on the roof and a smart charger controller. This just sits there without any need to touch anything. I can connect to EHU and the mains onboard charger also works. The solar panel keeps the battery perfectly charged while on the drive and not connected to EHU.
Beauty of being roof mounted is I don't have to do anything at all. Ideally a standup panel would be more effective than a flat one as it could be moved to follow the sun, but the downside is it is another thing to mess with setting up and could be hit with a football etc.
Great navver, have you any thoughts on LiFeP04 drop in replacement batteries, they sure seem to be the way forward, especially as prices are starting to drop.
we have a 150w panel on the vans roof which keeps the leisure battery nicely topped up & have ran up to three days static off-grid with the 12v fridge on constantly, bit of usb charging & led lighting & a quick blast of the diesel heater. Never used the ehu yet. We cook on refillable lpg.
Thanks to all for all of the useful info and we reckon as a result a 150W panel system will do us fine.
We have decided to go for the panel as used by Octavia4x4.
The link was very useful to us and we will order on Monday.
Enjoy your hols,
Richard and Pam.
Amazing family weekend with old steam engines, classic car displays, market stalls, and full catering and bar. And camping on site - Save £25 by booking in advance.
Topic: Solar panel
