Temporary mount for solar panel

hi Michael42, it all depends if you want to penetrate the roof with fixings or not. the solar panel sounds small,is there any way of strapping it down.

At 10W, is the panel worth taking given the hassles involved in mounting it ? Don't mean to be a killjoy.

I agree with the others - the 10w panel will hardly replace anything, have one to maintain boat battery when not being used and it just maintains the losses over a period of 5-6 weeks. If you want to mount it try silicon or Sikaflex - cut it off with a Stanley knife after the trip, make sure you wipe surface with alcohol wipe before sticking down. I do this to attach sounder transducer to back of boat as I didn't want to drill holes - works a treat and the Sikaflex is still pliable enough to be cut - original surface can be restored after cutting off Sikaflex by using a bit of Turps.

Easier solution - why dont you just hook a set of jumperleads or build a cable that plugs into your battery box from your main battery and run the vehicle for 10-15 minutes every now and then - should top it up.

Why can't your lights run off the second battery ? They draw such low current if fluro's - Second battery should have no worries with fridge and lights if you are driving every day

Like age suggests, I'd have thought you could just run your lights off the second battery with the fridge. I do that with the fridge running on freeze, camera & phone chargers, and have only noticed the second battery start to run down after stays of more than 3 nights without driving during the day. If you stay that long, then you could just sit your solar panel on the roof during your stay.

We use a 13W suitcase style panel to keep the camper battery topped up. We use less than 5A a day so with good sun and moving the panel to point at the sun it's ok. The 10w is probably peak and efficiency will fall away due to clouds/direction/heat pretty quickly. You'ld probably expect less than 0.5A available current.

If you don't want to hook up to the dual battery setup because you want to have the battery portable (ignore this thought if that's not part of the plan!) then put it into a $20 box, mount a 25A anderson plug on it and run a fused lead back to the battery. Probably not a lot more than buying good silicone and mucking around with the panel.

The panel on the roof (of the car or a caravan) also has a big disadvantage in that you often look for shade in which to park.

Adrian