Recently fitted a solar panel to the roof of my van. I only run lights and a water pump off the battery, but wanted to be able to run a couple of fans as well. We are heading back to Mambray Ck campsite in Mt Remarkable NP for easter, and even in April it can still be a bit warm in the day, hence the desire to invest in some fans.
I decided to take it out for a couple of nights over the LWE just gone to give it a test and make sure its all good. I took my 10yr old daughter to one of our favourite parks, about an hour from home. Its called Wirrina and I've no doubt already posted pictures of it earlier in the thread a couple of times, given this is our third visit.
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I purposely parked under a tree, so that the panel would end up having shade for some of the time, to get an idea of a worst case scenario.
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the main attraction. The park has 11 horses and some goats. we take a couple of large bags of apples and carrots to feed them. New Clydesdale foal this time.
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This is a few pics of a Memorial/lookout heading toward second valley, from Normanville. We stopped off for a quick look and walk along the beach.
The fans I bought are Jayco ones that replace the lights that go in each bed end. they aren't the best fans out there, but it was just more efficient use of space getting ones that hung from the roof brace, rather than using benchspace, which is already at a premium. I ran them on high speed for most of the weekend and overnight on low speed, to really test out how much they would use of the battery, and how well the solar panel would work in topping it back up. Long story short, the battery rarely dropped below 13v. the morning after I ran them all night it dropped to about 12.8 but was back up on float by mid morning. it was overcast for a fair portion too. pretty happy with that outcome.
rather than drill a hole in the roof, I just run an extension cord that I made using 8b&s, from an Anderson on the panel, to an Anderson on the chassis. you can see it in the 2nd pic running down the side.
all in all, a successful weekend, and a great dad n daughter weekend.