Thor Forums

[Ron]

My wife and I have had a 32' class A for a little over a year now and have so far just taken short trips around California. Our longest trip was to Portland Oregon (about 600 miles) but mostly just short 3 day trips.

My main interest in solar is to keep my batteries maintained while the rig is in storage since there is no power out there. It is stored outside and we use a cover to keep the sun rays off so any solar panel will have to be outside of the cover. This makes a permanent installation onto the roof not doable unless we cut a hole in the cover to let the sunlight through, which I don't want to do.

I know they sell small battery maintenance panels in the 5-15watt range but I get concerned about overcharging the batteries since these battery maintainers don't normally have charge controllers on them. I'm thinking, why not just get a 100W solar panel like the Renogy 100W starter kit (Amazon) and figure out some way to make a portable mount that can be installed on top of (or outside) our RV cover. It would have to be secured some way so that wind doesn't cause it to rub against the cover or the motorhome.

The added bonus is that it could also be used while camping.

Has anyone done something like this?