Solar Stuff...

[Grant H.]

I'll have to look. Might go with a golf cart style battery. Im not sure what came with the camper. I know the light are powered by it, but not funtional. So might as well up grade.
Are you saying you will get better power from a panel if its on a stand as to being flat?

A solar panel is most efficient when it is aimed directly at the sun.

In the random google image I have linked, you would want the panel aimed along the dotted yellow line.


The Elevation Angle of the sun changes daily, so you without an active tracker you won't get optimum sun all the time.

A good rule of thumb is to point your panel towards the equator at an angle equal to your latitude. 40? for the front range near Boulder. This is sort of a "happy medium" for a fixed installation between the high summer elevation, and low winter elevation.

So, to figure out how much loss you will have from laying it flat, there are two things to consider.
1. The difference in production at "Peak Sun" between a panel properly aimed at the sun and a panel installed flat will be ~15%. Your 100w panel is now only an 85w panel.
2. The duration of "Peak Sun" is significantly less with a flat panel, especially during the winter months with low elevation angles.

As for batteries, you need an idea of how many watts your lights draw, how long you want to be able to use them without damaging your batteries, and how fast you want them to recharge.

Golf Cart batteries are excellent options as they are built for frequent charge/discharge cycles, and to handle heavy current loads. This means they have thicker and heavier lead plates in them, which makes them last longer. Normal truck/car batteries actually kind of suck, as they are designed for very short but huge current draws (starting) and then they sit.

Sealed AGM Gel Golf Cart Battery 12 Volt 35 Amp Hour

That's not a very large battery, so if you have room to go larger, I would. Depending on where your battery lives, I would stick with the Sealed batteries, but it's not a problem as long as you understand that a flooded/serviceable battery will release hydrogen gas when charging.

With standard AGM, Lead Acid, etc batteries, you only want to use from 100% to 50% of the capacity, or else you will damage the battery and reduce it's capacity and longevity. Li-Ion is better, but requires more expensive charge controllers.

So, If we take your 35AH battery, and plan to only use 17AH out of it before recharging, you only need to replace 17AH before using the lights again.

In CO the "worst case" scenario for solar is a max of 4 hours of "good" sun per day (obviously much more in the Summer).
A 100w 12VDC panel will provide ~8AH for every hour of "good" sun it gets. This means, in 4 hours, you are going to get 32AH of production.

The advantage to a good quality solar controller is, they won't over charge (also bad for batteries) your batteries. They will let the batteries float when they reach max capacity, and essentially waste the solar panel production beyond that point.

So, you can go as small as a 60w panel to recharge your 35AH battery from 50% with 4 hours of sun.

I personally would go with a 100w panel, unless you are going to go larger on your batteries, and then you need to re-address your panel size.