What do people do with their solar setups when their not camping?

Hi all,

I have a small solar system that I use for camping consisting of:

80 Watt solar panel
Basic Steca regulator (Solsum 8.8F PWM)
100 A/H AGM Battery
400W modified sine wave inverter

Find it works great running a 40L Waeco, lights and a few other mod cons for those times im lucky enough to be out camping.

When im not camping though, I rest the panel against a sunny part of the back fence run 20 metres of $1 a metre wire from Dick Smith into the house and charge three dodgy 24 a/h batteries I was given a while back. From this I run my waeco as a beer fridge 24/7, charge AA/AAA batteries, surf the net on my laptop etc etc. Every now and then I connect my 100 a/h good battery just to keep it in tip top condition. I have been doing this for nearly a year now and find that the batteries get plenty of charge, I use the laptop as much as I like and feel good about not using the grid to keep my beers ice cold!

Seems like a waste to have a perfectly good renewable energy system lying around doing nothing so I am curious as to what other people use their systems for when at home? So whose first?

Cheers

Postieboy