Slipping voltage & the winter months
I don’t know if anyone else has that sinking feeling as they watch their caravan battery voltage slowly slipping into the land of dischargness. But its happened to me today. I thought I covered my bases by mounting a 20w solar panel in the sky light, but
only pointing straight up – its not getting enough good light to keep the battery at a steady voltage.
The Van has a Phantom tracker installed and even with the worlds biggest leisure battery, the lowest consumption of any tracker on the market, it’s a fair bet that one day enough power will be sucked out of the battery to render it useless.
So to curb such an expensive and pointless occasion arising I’ve today installed a 100w solar panel behind the front window so to keep the old battery topped up while I’m not using it.
The price of these panels is dropping all the time, so 100w was the best choice and quite possibly completely over kill, but being mounted behind tinted windows, and being partially blocked by the pillar I guessed at best the panel will only be about 50%
efficient – and with the shorter winter days looming 50w over 5 hours will keep the battery fairly happy.