It has been a long time since September last year when we where about to install our solar panels, we had almost all the parts ready (Except a few minor bits and bobs), now all we just needed a clear weekend for both me and the weather.
It is now the Easter weekend 2024 over 6 months later than expected, I have booked Steve Cowman to help as these panels as they are very very large and it has been over 30 years since I have tapped a hole…
But before Steve came to help, I had to route the wires back to the engine bay where I was mounting the MPPT Solar controller. On the Black Prince boats of this era they had used some skirting board at the bottom and top of the walls, so I removed the upper boards and found a wooden batten which the skirting board was screwed to, each side of this was two approx 1 inch / 25mm layers of polystyrene as insulation.
Note: Interesting thing about polystyrene is that it has a bad effect on PVC (Polyvinyl chloride) and over time it eats into the surface of the PVC making it brittle. A lot of wires used in boats and our homes are PVC coated or includes PVC as this makes the plastic coating more flexible.
see https://youtu.be/fArXX-u7uxs
Using a knife I cut out one layer of the polystyrene foam below the wooden batten to create a channel in this I placed some flexible nylon conduit, in which I run the solar cables back to my services cupboard at the back of the boat.
In the services cupboard I installed an 100 Amp dual pole isolator.
The cables from this then routed into the engine bay and to the solar controller PV in connections.
The red arrow will become important later, best to say this board is unfortunately mounted in a very hard to reach place.
Next Sonia (the super wife) and I moved the panels on to the grass and mounted the long aluminium slotted bars to the back of the panels as near to the edges as possible, then about 20cm in from the ends we attached the legs. unfortunately this was as far as we could go as the wind was making it almost impossible to move the panels. So for the next couple of days we had to wait for the wind and rain to stop long enough for us to complete the job.
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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