We are hoping in a couple of years to take a gap year! all out kids will have either left home or be at Uni, so time for old’s to go on an adventure. To enable us not to have to run the engine to charge the batteries, we are looking at solar panels.
On our latest trip to the boat I took some measurements of the available space on the roof that we could use for solar panels, we cannot use the area behind the centre line point as we have ropes and mounting for the pole, boat hook and our plank.
I have been looking at large panels that can deliver 400+ watts, this make the roof more difficult to walk on, but with just two fitted we can still layout on the roof and watch the stars and we don’t tend to walk on the roof, the knees won’t take the jump down.
This diagram is based on using two 415W Perlight Delta panels, which are 1719mm long x 1140mm wide and 30mm thick. I am hoping that a combined 830W will give me enough power in the summer, while providing some still usable power in the winter (More on my calculations in a future post).
We currently have two 12v TV’s (not often both used, but one in the bedroom and one in the lounge) , a 12V fridge, 240V washing machine, a hungry 3500W inverter, LED Lighting, water pumps, internet wifi/router, laptops and phones and about 400 Ah of lead acid batteries, so about 200 Ah usable power (an upgrade to Lithium will come one day).
We want to plan ahead and have more supply than we currently need, hoping to cover us for future needs and upgrades.
Next I want to find mountings that will go as low as possible, but still enable us to angle the panels for better output, especially in winter when the sun is low to the horzion.
Also see
Planning for Solar Panels – Part 1
Planning for Solar Panels Part 2 – Panel Mounting Options
Planning for Solar Panels Part 3 – Types of Panels
Planning for Solar Panels Part 4 – MPPT vs PWM solar controllers
Planning for Solar Panels part 5 – Cable sizes, lengths and resistance.
Planning for Solar Panels part 6 – Panels in Serial or Parallel
Planning for Solar Panels part 7 – Buying the cable and Circuit breakers
Planning for Solar Panels part 8 – Buying Solar Panels and Mountings
Planning for Solar Panels part 9 – Wiring
Planning for Solar Panels part 10 – Drilling, Tapping and Fitting
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