anyone ever setup one of the solar battery chargers?

[ngt]

I've been looking at solar batter chargers, just to be safe. I haven't taken my boat out and just don't want to get stranded out somewhere. I'm sure it's not going to juice it up quickly, but I figured better safe than sorry. Anyone ever hooked one of these things up? Any info on them? Any advice on a brand?

 

[Splat]

Re: anyone ever setup one of the solar battery chargers?

In general they don't put out enough current to do you any real good. As a maintainer or a trickle chatger they may work well enough, but they would take several days to bring a dead battery up to full charge.

Someone once said you'd have to spend like $1000 in photovalec cells to make a battery charger worth using on the water. I have no idea ow acurate this statement was, but its prolly not far off.

Bill

 

[abj87]

Re: anyone ever setup one of the solar battery chargers?

Dual Batteries with automatic combiner and emergency parallel switch.

 

[Silvertip]

Re: anyone ever setup one of the solar battery chargers?

You need a very large boat to utilize a solar array to charge a battery in a short period of time. The little units you see advertized are very low power and are used primarily to keep a battery topped off while in storage. As a battery charger they are worthless. To get one large enough to call a charger you would one with surface area of many square feet so where would you mount it. The $1000 figure is real. For about $40 you can buy a jump start box for emergencies.

 

[Tacklewasher]

Re: anyone ever setup one of the solar battery chargers?

I'm working for a solar company.

I don't have a solar panel on my boat.

Outside of maintaining a charge, not worth the money.