Solar charging

[Kev]

I am thinking of using a solar panel to maintain my battery when in storage. Has anyone had experience on what works the best?

[scrubjaysnest]

We leave the two 100 watt panels I mounted on the roof to keep all 3 batteries charged. Once the funds are available for a carport to park the MH under I'll add a single 100 watt panel to the carport and plug into the leads from one of the current roof mounted panels.
We leave the roof panels on all the time even when connected to shore power. The panels will take over charging from the converter once full sun gets to them.

[DenverTransplant]

I have been using a Ecoworthy 100W portable unit this winter and have had no problems. I’m positioned in the storage lot where I store the coach in such that I only get morning sun, but even with the limited sun time its kept the batteries charged. I do visit the coach a couple of times a month to run the generator and engine for a half hour or so, but at every visit, the batteries have been at 100%.

Initially I was using the charger that came with the panels, but decided to add a Bogart SC-2030 charger to go with my Trimetrics battery monitor. I was concerned that the charger that came with the panels was too simple of a charger for long term connection to the batteries. The SC-2030 has a lot more smarts relative to knowing what my batteries need and so far this winter I haven’t had to add any battery water.

I have all of the parts and pieces to put 200W of flexible panels on the roof this spring. However I’m going to keep the pig tail I installed to connect the portable unit to the SC-2030 so I can continue to use the portable unit to supplement the 200W panels when we are boondocking.

[jpmihalk]

We have 400W of solar panels on our roof and they do a great job of charging in daylight. They are hooked to the controller and separately run to the battery buss in the battery compartment. We have 4 12V AGM batteries as we like to boondock a lot, so there is more capacity to charge.