The mobile solar panels worked great
I hooked up my mobile solar panels for the first time this morning, and they worked great. It's been taking till somewhere around 12 to 2 o'clock to fully charge my batteries, but after hooking up to the new panels at around 9 o'clock, now I not only had the roof panels charging but I had the panels on the ground charging and my four lithium iron house batteries were fully charged to 14.4 volts by 10:30. And that is a tremendous improvement.
I have 500 watts of solar panels on the Lances' roof and 300 watts on the ground. The 500 watts on the roof were putting out 11 amps, and the 300 watts on the ground were putting out 18 amps. All because the ground panels were pointed in the right direction with no shading, the roof panels were lying flat with shading on various panels here and there.
And I think what this shows is the huge difference between having the panels lying flat on my roof and having them sitting on the ground, pointed at the sun the way they should be.
Now I see no reason that I should have to put out these mobile panels every day, because it definitely takes twice as long for me to pack up and get ready to go to the store, when I have to pack up the panels, so I think I won't need them until I get clouds for most of the day.
I also don't think I will need them in the summer since the sun is more or less straight up in the sky, and the panels on the roof will be facing the sun, so there should be very little, if any, shading on the panels.
theboondork
This is the new solar controller I had to buy that controls just my mobile solar panels. I really didn't want to have to buy it, but everything I read said that's what you have to do unless all of your panels match up perfectly.
Here’s a picture of the new solar panels, the first time I deployed them. These new panels have a combined wattage of 300 and put out almost twice as many amps as my 5 100-watt roof panels, since the roof panels don't face the sun.
The desert around me is filling up with boondocking RVs. It's starting to look like a commercial RV park….. Except here I feel like a brother of the road, a teammate, a member of the pack. And even though I don't like to live around a crowd, sometimes it feels good to know I'm not the only one who enjoys living the way I do.