Going solar!

Spent the last couple of weekends installing a new solar system on the boat. Since there was very little wind for sailing! Why solar now? Answer is relatively easy: I don't really like to be dependent on shore power and I also don't think it is a good idea to run the engine just for charging the battery. We end up staying quite often overnight somewhere outside with the boat and the batteries come down quite a bit with the anchor light on all night. Usually we would run the engine for less than 15min to get in and out of the marina/anchorage, so that's clearly not enough to get the batteries recharged. But if the wind is right, why have the engine drone on? But that's what usually happens, otherwise you run into danger of draining the batteries too much, damaging them in the progress. 

Nowadays, they have pretty affordable flexible panels available for less than $140 each, so I thought I give it a try. These are the same panels sold under the brand name of Solbian, but I got them much cheaper on eBay. 50W each, which is quite impressive just thinking a couple of years back. The biggest investment was the charge controller from BlueSky Energy, which came in at $292, but is also capable of supporting bigger panel arrays, and has some nice features boosting the panel output. I figured if I ever want to go on an extended cruise I would need some means to be able to recharge without shore power, so that leaves me the option to upgrade the panels if necessary. 

The next question was where to mount the panels. The only place that is not interfering with handling the boat and sails is really on the top of the spray hood. That's where the flexible panels come in handy. Of course you don't want them flexing back and forth, but I think the installation is rigid enough that it shouldn't affect lifetime too much. For now the panels are mounted using sewed in industrial strength Velcro. I probably need to reinforce the corners a little, but that can come later.

Today was the day when I finally connected the first panel. 1.1A from the get go on a hazy late afternoon, not too bad! After adding the second panel I should have enough juice running to never ever having to run the engine again for charging, hooray!

Solar panel installation (still need to hide the cables)

Hooray, 1.1Amps!