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Solar Panels

A lot of you folk are reading this site because you are considering putting solar panels on the roof of your house or on a caravan. If you think putting them on the roof of your house and feeding the power into the grid is a good idea please read my grid feeding article here: Grid feed info

If you are thinking about putting solar panels on the roof of a caravan or motor home then you are thinking my language. There is nothing better than a bit of self reliance when it comes to a motoring holiday. Paying heaps for crowded powered site sucks, and a few solar panels, a battery, an inverter and a few other bits and pieces will really increase your self sufficiency level and the quality of your road trip.

If you imagine camping somewhere really nice for free, or taking that quiet unpowered corner at the van park then your on my wavelength!

Solar panel prices have dropped considerably and smaller caravan sized modules are fast disappearing off the market but a good choice for carravanners and motor home owners is the budget priced smaller grid feed panels that are on the market. To get these solar panels to charge a battery you will have to fit solar maximiser because the voltage of a grid feed solar panel is not suited to battery charging but solar maximisers are now common and will boost the output of the solar panel that is connected to it by allowing the solar panel to operate at maximum efficiency.

Setting up a solar system for a house, cabin or motor home is detailed in the book: Renewable Energy" " Design installation and use for Home Owners". The title should have included motor home and caravan owners as well but it would have been a bit long ... click here for more info

Anyway .... going on the road without power is a pain in the butt. You will save the cost of a solar system by not paying powered camp site fees which seem to me to be a bit steep. I once worked at Mataranka Homestead and it was almost sad how upset folks would become when all the powered sites were gone!

Solar panels are also a neat piece of kit if you live without the grid connected to you house like I do. What would you do without them? Perhaps wind or micro-hydro? Its all in the book!

Solar panels operate work on a principal called the photovoltaic effect which is the conversion of light into electricity. It was a Frenchman named Alexandre-Edmond Becquerel (24/3/1820 - 11/5/1891) who is credited with the discovery of the photovoltaic effect and as a result of his efforts the first solar cells were made around 1839.

The first solar cells put out miniscule amounts of electricity and the effect was considered novel but useless until it was taken up by photographic industry who were in need of a device to measure light. The first commercially built solar panels were used as light meters in cameras, and this use continues to this day.

The use of a solar panel as a light meter gives us the first important piece of information about solar panels: The output of a solar panel is directly proportional to the amount of light falling on it!

Although solar salesmen may tell you otherwise, there is really no such thing as a solar panel that will work in low light or a solar panel that is shade tolerant. Some solar panels may be slightly better than other solar panels in this respect but a percentage more output than stuff all is still stuff all. The output of a panel is directly proportional to the amount of light falling on it and this means that a solar panel must be in direct sunlight and orientated in the correct direction.

It is the fact that a solar panel only works well in direct sunlight that is the only real disadvantage if you are putting solar panels on a caravan. The problem is that the nice shady piece of real estate down by the river may have to be passed by for a more sunlight oriented position.

Several ways of overcoming this problem are: Locating the panels on the very end of your van or making a folding panel and positioning it on a lead that connects with something like an Anderson plug into your motor home pow err system.

Happy travels!

Rob.