Solar Panels and Motor Homes

I don't have any plans to put anything on your motor home.

But If I find one cheap I will likely plan to put it on my home!

So what do you need to power? And what other intentions do you have for it?

I will be trickle charging 2 optima Marine/RV batteries that I will be using to keep my inverter operating for A/C tv micro.

This will never work.

It's a well-established fact that it always rains when you go camping!

Now on the other hand, if you collect the rainwater running off the top of your motor home and used it to drive a waterwheel generator...

"Does anyony have any plan on puting a solar panel on top of my motor home?"

Yes! How did you know?? It was supposed to be a supprise.

I will caution you on the details of the specified output (under what conditions).

I have done experiments with solar blankets that barely meet the specified output when the sun is directly at high noon on a clear day. Output is considerably less at other angles.

Depending on your battery charge requirements (recovery, etc-4 batteries?), I venture to say that this 62 W product will fall short of keeping the battery charged for day to day RV use.

What kind of panel will work? I have seen them where they were about 24"X36" what the out put was I dont know. I think it was in the Harbor Freight catalog. What is your opinion?

I think the HF panels are only 15 watts. Go to AEE, they are selling panels right now for about $3/watt. One 150 watt (or so) panel and a decent charge controller and your good to go.

I'd recommend looking at some various manufacturers of PV arrays and see what sort of energy levels you can expect from them. I'm assuming you are going to mount them flat on the roof so you don't have to orient them to the sun and that will reduce the output by about 1/3 even at high noon depending on where you will camp.

I believe you will be disappointed by the number of watt-hours you get from the panels, especially considering the expense ($$). If your genset in the motorhome is too noisy for your tastes, a Honda EU2000i does a nice job of recharging your house batteries and running various AC loads (no AC, maybe microwave depending on model), it weighs about 60 lbs and will only set you back about $1k and it is plenty quiet. Plus you can set it away from your rig with an extension cord and you will hardly hear it and there won't be any vibration.

Yes, as in post #5 with an appropriately sized charge controller and fuses/breakers. Or you can us a small, ground based array which you set up when you camp, and put it in the RV when on the road. You get more watts per dollar with the rigid panels than with the flexible kind.

Kits to install PV arrays on top of vehicles like caravans and boats are readily available. The most popular type is connected to via voltage/current regulator box that cuts off the trickle charging current when the battery voltage rises above a certain point. They connect into the domestic 12VDC circuit at any point, and the minimum amount of vehicle wiring will be found when the simply plug in to an unused 12VDC socket already wired to the domestic battery system.

Allow around £85GBP for an entry-level unit.

Where can I purchase it?