Has anyone here installed a solar battery charger on their camp trailers? I'm looking at a 15 watt unit. Does anyone think that'll work to keep the batteries charged for long weekends in hunting camp? I don't run a whole lot of stuff, no tv's or radios. Just a couple lights, water pump and the furnace at night if it's cold.

 

Can't say anything from experience on the car battery chargers but I know I've tried a half dozens kinds of hot wire fence chargers solar powered and never have found one that worked worth a damn. Just a lot a wasted money and time tryin to find critters scattered all over the country side.

 

I have a friend that put two panels on his camper and he swears by them. I don't know what size they are, but I remember he paid about $300 each for them 4 or 5 years ago. He did say it was important to clean them off every couple of months or they didn't work as well. I want to do this to my camper also, keep us updated with what you find out there.

 

I will tell you this much... At 15 amps you wont be powering any heaters haha. If they are 12V panels and output 15 amps that's only 180 watts. So that will give you a guess to what they can power. If you had no draw on your batteries all day im sure they could charge them up to run heat over night... depending on how much your blower motor draws.

 

One 15 Watt panel on one 12V battery is nothing more than a trickle charge, might be good for trailer storage to keep the battery topped up. 50 Watt would be my minimum.

 

I use 2 80 watt panels on my GN horse trailer. Have a total of 4 batteries for my 12v usage. I can run the furnace, lights, etc all night, system charges the overnight battery draw back up in a short amount of time.

I use the same system on my TT, again, meets ALL my power needs overnight and recharges the batteries right up the next day.

I have a charge controller that protects the batteries from overcharging. It is nice to have 'electric' power all day that is not draining the batteries. My setup also has a pure sinewave inverter that converts the 12 volts to 110 volts, nice to have the sun run some of my 110 volt stuff too.

I use a small 15 watt panel to keep the emergency brake battery charged on all my flatbeds.


NP

 

i have 6 deep cycle batts on my boat and 1 solar. it cant charge at the rate i use but it will top them up in time. i run the a/c for two days at a time and to date never ran out of juice. i think i could have got away with 4 batts. i have never put a charger on it.i did test the a/c and it ran 7 hours on one batt. hope this helps. oh and i have never spent more then 4 days at one time on the boat, and only ran the a/c for about 7 hours a night. i then park it in the yard and the next time i use it its full