Has anyone used a free standing solar panel (60 watts) to charge their battery. How efficient are they and are they worth the initial outlay?
Solar Panel - Free standing
- Thread starter dchapple
- Start date
we bought an 80watt folding panel with charge controller and bag from fleabay for just over £200 delivered(new) and took it on a 3day rally.Used everything we normally would,lights TV showers DVD player etc and the weather wasnt sunny most of the time we still had a full enough battery to work the motormover etc.I fitted a digital voltmeter and we left at 12 today battery was nearly fully charged.It seemed well worth it so far .I took a good lock and wire leash to stop it disappearing ,if you need any more info its fine for mods to give you my email.
Parksy
Moderator
We use an 80 watt solar panel when we go to rallies without ehu to charge the battery. As Dave has mentioned, we use all 12v systems without having to worry about our 110 a/h leisure battery becoming discharged. Many of those who regularly go on non ehu rallies now use solar power, some are roof mounted and others are free standing.
The investment is worth it if you are off ehu regularly and for longer periods, such as on caravan rallies. Used in conjunction with led lighting battery life is not an issue.
The efficiency of solar panels can depend on the equipment used, Mono crystalline are said to be more efficient than Poly crystalline solar panels and a good solar panel regulator coupled with wiring of sufficient gauge aids efficiency.
There is more on the different types / efficiency of solar panels Here
The investment is worth it if you are off ehu regularly and for longer periods, such as on caravan rallies. Used in conjunction with led lighting battery life is not an issue.
The efficiency of solar panels can depend on the equipment used, Mono crystalline are said to be more efficient than Poly crystalline solar panels and a good solar panel regulator coupled with wiring of sufficient gauge aids efficiency.
There is more on the different types / efficiency of solar panels Here
What is the point in going on a rally in some farmer's field with no EHU if you have to spend hundreds on a solar panel? Surely iot si just as cheap to use a proper site with EHU?
Parksy
Moderator
Surfer said:
It's not always all about money for us, Surfer.
We enjoy the company of friends and acquaintances on rallies plus we get to stay in places with beautiful scenery or where there are major attractions which would otherwise be off limits to caravans.
We get the maximum use out of our caravan, never have to book so if the weather is bad we can decide quite literally at the last minute whether to go or not and it could be said that we use our caravan to it's full potential.
You possibly have a rather bleak or negative mental image regarding caravan rallies, not every rally is held 'in some farmers field with no ehu', some rallies do have ehu available and some rallies are held in the grounds of stately homes with landscaping by Capability Brown or at other places of interest.
To consider the money side of things,when you notice that a site with ehu may be charging £2.50 per night or more extra for ehu, work out how much 240v electricity the average caravan will use over 24 hours.
Rally pitch prices usually reflect the fact that there is no ehu, I know that you will quote the price of the 60s,70s,80s rally held by West Midland d.a. which is shown elsewhere on this forum but the price of that one particular rally reflects the cost of the entertainment on offer and is higher than the usual cost for a 'normal' rally.
Having said all of that I can understand that rallies or off ehu camping will not suit everyone so e.t.t.o.
We still occasionally use commercial sites with full facilities, more often if we visit the coast but why should we pay for kiddies play areas, swimming pools, bars and clubhouses, crazy golf and kiss me quick stuff that we don't use?
Why should we pay through the nose to visit club sites with imaculate toilet / shower blocks and ehu bollards with lights shining half of the night, streetlamps and lit up washing up areas when we are more than happy to use our on board facilities and enjoy the stars on a velvet black night with vitually no light pollution or other noises.
To go back on topic, our solar panel allows us the freedom to go wherever we want to without the dependency on ehu and to us was worth every penny
Hi Surfer,
Each to their own,
Sometimes sites do not have all teh pitches services with an EHU point, or the loaction wher you need to be simply does not have EHU available.
Major caravan rallies rarely have EHU's
So its the cost of independance.
Each to their own,
Sometimes sites do not have all teh pitches services with an EHU point, or the loaction wher you need to be simply does not have EHU available.
Major caravan rallies rarely have EHU's
So its the cost of independance.
Hi Surfer,we bought our solar panel just to do a few rallies and we started with the CC nationaal rally last weekend.Although it was in a field the ptiches were large ,better than some sites we have paid £25 /£30 a night for.We could have had hookup but we would rather have saved the money towards a panel.We went to two high class shows,the East Coast Boys and the John Miller Orchestra,nephew of Glenn Miller and had a great time.We have also got tickets for Twinwood,another long weekend with shows but no hookup.Not having EHU doesnt mean sitting in a field with a candle at night waiting to go home on Sunday afternoon.
Parksy
Moderator
Hi Dave, we've got our tickets for the Twinwoods Festival so I'll get the beers in and see you there again this year. I hope that I will have found the time to roof mount my solar panel by the time that we go there.
Hi Steve,Thats great we are really looking forward to it.I'd like to see how you fix the panel and have a few beers with you,best wishes to Carole as well.
Been using my 50 watt for three years. Never had to worry about not having EHU. It had paid for itself within a year. Now we are 5 the savings over site fees and CL's/CS's with no EHU are phenomenal. Just had a week away for half term for 36 pounds rather than almost that a night!!!
Hi Parksy Would you pass my e-mail address onto Deli Dave_374550494 as he was going to provide me with some more info on Solar Panels . Thanks dchapple
Parksy
Moderator
This solar panel thing seems a grand idea.
I spent £460 last season on electric keeping the van warm etc. While that isn't a lot per day for fulltiming, I'm always up for the challenge to go greener. So the $64 question is how big would my solar panel need to be to generate 3Kw of power consistantly? Could I wire in a converter / capacitor to store sufficient juice so that we could run the van using the existing 3 pin 16amp EHU?
Currently (pardon the pun), I'm paying 25% on top of my pitch fee for electric which is metered. I know that compared to home cost's of electric is probably close to £400 a quater these days. So I'm doing well in the caravan, but when every penny counts it's always good to look at the alternatives.
I spent £460 last season on electric keeping the van warm etc. While that isn't a lot per day for fulltiming, I'm always up for the challenge to go greener. So the $64 question is how big would my solar panel need to be to generate 3Kw of power consistantly? Could I wire in a converter / capacitor to store sufficient juice so that we could run the van using the existing 3 pin 16amp EHU?
Currently (pardon the pun), I'm paying 25% on top of my pitch fee for electric which is metered. I know that compared to home cost's of electric is probably close to £400 a quater these days. So I'm doing well in the caravan, but when every penny counts it's always good to look at the alternatives.
Hello Steve
Honestly this is a serious reply.
Even in the UK there are ways of collecting the free energy of the wind, sun and temperature. and whilst many of the technologies are in appropriate for touring caravan, by virtue of size and weight, for a full timers like you, there could be an alternative:-
How about considering a second trailer to act as a service module for the caravan?
Depending on the technologies you choose, The trailer could contain a combination of any of the following:
Batteries for the storage of power produced by:
Depending on the battery configuration power taken off could be
Super insulated hot water tank. this could be charged with:-
Hot water could be delivered through super insulated pipes to the caravan.
Space heating by using storage heater technology.
The heat could be delivered through super insulated air ducts or used to heat a water circulation system.
I fully appreceiate that such a scheme if taken to an extreme and cutting edge technology could cost a fortune, but a modest system of say the battery pack, wind and solar generator with an inverter could be put together for a few hundred pounds.
This might just cost a bit more than you are paying for your electricity now - but think of the long term savings over 150years!
Honestly this is a serious reply.
Even in the UK there are ways of collecting the free energy of the wind, sun and temperature. and whilst many of the technologies are in appropriate for touring caravan, by virtue of size and weight, for a full timers like you, there could be an alternative:-
How about considering a second trailer to act as a service module for the caravan?
Depending on the technologies you choose, The trailer could contain a combination of any of the following:
Batteries for the storage of power produced by:
- Wind turbine
- Solar Panels
- Generators/fuel cells
- Mains charger when ehu is available
Depending on the battery configuration power taken off could be
- 12V dc
- 230V ac through an inverter. There are marine inverters (as found on many canal boats) but the batteries may need to configured as 24 or even 48V dc for best inverter efficiency. These inverters are also available with built in intelligent mains chargers for when an EHU is available.
Super insulated hot water tank. this could be charged with:-
- Solar thermal panels,
- An air heat recovery system. (fridge in reverse)
- Mains Immersion heater
- or even a low voltage immersion heater driven from wind generator
Hot water could be delivered through super insulated pipes to the caravan.
Space heating by using storage heater technology.
- Wind powered turbines directly driving the heating elements,
- mains power (through EHU)
- air heat recovery.
The heat could be delivered through super insulated air ducts or used to heat a water circulation system.
I fully appreceiate that such a scheme if taken to an extreme and cutting edge technology could cost a fortune, but a modest system of say the battery pack, wind and solar generator with an inverter could be put together for a few hundred pounds.
This might just cost a bit more than you are paying for your electricity now - but think of the long term savings over 150years!
Go high tech Steve and build a hydrogen generating plant so that you can generate hydrogen from water using solar and wind power and store it to be used by a large hydrogen fuel cell as and when electricity is required
I was in the process of refining my reply when graham answered and it locked me out, so I appologise for the similarities between this and my last reply
Hello Steve
Honestly this is a serious reply.
Even in the UK there are ways of collecting the free energy of the wind, sun and temperature.
Caravans are actually quite energy efficeint, Electrically small numbers of lights, and applainces tend to be a bit smaller and thus less energy hungry so you end up doing a lot more with the the 16A that you would in a normal domestic property.
Also caravans have much smaller volumes and mass which means that with reasonable insulation the energy required to heat per unit volume is also better than most domestic properties.
The frugality that caravan living imposes makes it far more likely that renewable energy sources could be employed to good effect.
Supply and demand - when sun and wind are available they often don't coincide with when you want use the energy, also we tend to want large quantities of energy over short times, which would outstrip the instaneous power available, so there is a need to engineer storage solutions. This not only makes best use of when the sun and wind are available, but with sufficient storage capacity it also enable the large chunks of power we want to be delivered when we want them.
Based on marine applications where a canal boat can be adequatly serviced with electricity and water heating derived from a combination of wind and solar panel I suspect that a modest system should be able to furnish a caravan with at least a significant proportion of its electrical and water heating requiements. However all this extra equipment is impractical in a touring caravan because of the weight and the space it would take up.
Now for most touring caravanner's, for the reason in the previous paragraph, a major system is just not practical, but for full timers in your situation how about considering a second trailer to act as a service module for the caravan? as you only move sites a relatively short distance, it would mean a second journey to move the service module between sites.
Depending on the technologies you choose, The trailer could contain a combination of any of the following:
Batteries for the storage of power produced by:
Wind turbine
Solar Panels
Generators/fuel cells
Mains charger when ehu is available
Depending on the battery configuration power taken off could be
Super insulated hot water tank. this could be charged with:-
Hot water could be delivered through super insulated pipes to the caravan.
Space heating by using storage heater technology.
The heat could be delivered through super insulated air ducts or used to heat a water circulation system.
I fully appreceiate that such a scheme if taken to an extreme and cutting edge technology could cost a fortune, but a modest system of say the battery pack, wind and solar generator with an inverter could be put together for a few hundred pounds.
This might just cost a bit more than you are paying for your electricity now - but think of the long term savings over 150years!
Hello Steve
Honestly this is a serious reply.
Even in the UK there are ways of collecting the free energy of the wind, sun and temperature.
Caravans are actually quite energy efficeint, Electrically small numbers of lights, and applainces tend to be a bit smaller and thus less energy hungry so you end up doing a lot more with the the 16A that you would in a normal domestic property.
Also caravans have much smaller volumes and mass which means that with reasonable insulation the energy required to heat per unit volume is also better than most domestic properties.
The frugality that caravan living imposes makes it far more likely that renewable energy sources could be employed to good effect.
Supply and demand - when sun and wind are available they often don't coincide with when you want use the energy, also we tend to want large quantities of energy over short times, which would outstrip the instaneous power available, so there is a need to engineer storage solutions. This not only makes best use of when the sun and wind are available, but with sufficient storage capacity it also enable the large chunks of power we want to be delivered when we want them.
Based on marine applications where a canal boat can be adequatly serviced with electricity and water heating derived from a combination of wind and solar panel I suspect that a modest system should be able to furnish a caravan with at least a significant proportion of its electrical and water heating requiements. However all this extra equipment is impractical in a touring caravan because of the weight and the space it would take up.
Now for most touring caravanner's, for the reason in the previous paragraph, a major system is just not practical, but for full timers in your situation how about considering a second trailer to act as a service module for the caravan? as you only move sites a relatively short distance, it would mean a second journey to move the service module between sites.
Depending on the technologies you choose, The trailer could contain a combination of any of the following:
Batteries for the storage of power produced by:
Wind turbine
Solar Panels
Generators/fuel cells
Mains charger when ehu is available
Depending on the battery configuration power taken off could be
- 12V dc
- 230V ac through an inverter. There are marine inverters (as found on many canal boats) but the batteries may need to configured as 24 or even 48V dc for best inverter efficiency. These inverters are also available with built in intelligent mains chargers for when an EHU is available.
Super insulated hot water tank. this could be charged with:-
- Solar thermal panels,
- An air heat recovery system. (fridge in reverse)
- Mains Immersion heater
- or even a low voltage immersion heater driven from wind generator
Hot water could be delivered through super insulated pipes to the caravan.
Space heating by using storage heater technology.
- Wind powered turbines directly driving the heating elements,
- mains power (through EHU)
- air heat recovery.
The heat could be delivered through super insulated air ducts or used to heat a water circulation system.
I fully appreceiate that such a scheme if taken to an extreme and cutting edge technology could cost a fortune, but a modest system of say the battery pack, wind and solar generator with an inverter could be put together for a few hundred pounds.
This might just cost a bit more than you are paying for your electricity now - but think of the long term savings over 150years!
I like the idea's John. Especially the narrow boat system using a battery bank either wind or solar charged.
Trouble if I don't think the warden would like it considering he insisted on me turning my wind deflector round last year as there was "too much of a circus going on" due to 20 holiday stickers being on it.
So I don't think a "carlos fandango" self-sufficient trailer would cut the mustard.
Trouble if I don't think the warden would like it considering he insisted on me turning my wind deflector round last year as there was "too much of a circus going on" due to 20 holiday stickers being on it.
So I don't think a "carlos fandango" self-sufficient trailer would cut the mustard.
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