Beginner needing guidance

System

Hi, I have a 2008 skyline weekender travel trailer. I thought I could purchase a solar panel for it, hook it up to my battery and be on my way. Not the case. After browsing this forum I have decided I know nothing I first tried a brunton 15w solar panel with a brunton regulator. All it did was drain my battery. I have a small 5w panel in my shed that i hook up my boat batteries to, it works great charging and maintaining them so I decided to hook one of those up to see if it would work, but it didnt. Is there a way to hook this up so I dont have to un hook my battery from my trailer to charge it with solar? My trailer had a three stage converter and my battery is a standard deep cycle? Any advice would be more than appreciated:D

Cariboocoot

Re: Beginner needing guidance

Welcome to the forum.

A solar panel connected to the battery should not drain it, providing the polarity is correct and the charge controller is in place. Really small panels sometimes use just a blocking diode to prevent the battery from draining through the panel at night (when reverse current flow can occur).

First check that the battery isn't draining through some other means. If it will stay up on its own left alone for a week, you're good to go.

Second, if you actually want to charge the battery from solar you'll need to know the Amp hour capacity of the battery. Otherwise even a 15 Watt panel is barely a trickle charge (perhaps 1 Amp under good sun conditions) and will do little more than stave off self-discharge.

To that end, the charge controller you used sounds a bit suspect as any solid-state controller unit should not drain the battery or allow it to drain through the panel.

You may want to get a larger panel (for 100 Amp hour battery you'd be looking at about 80 Watts for a minimal charge) and a different controller like this http://www.solar-electric.com/sg-4.html at the very least.

System2

Re: Beginner needing guidance

Hey thank you, that gets me started in the right direction