Wintertime and batteries

[trevskoda]

I have a 30watt solar panel that I sometimes use in summer to top up various batteries, I have tried it on the moho engine battery over a 3 day blue sky summer weekend in July. Panel out in the open, 17degrees from horizontal,l facing due south, kept clean and it only managed 0.2 watt input into a 12 month old 95 amp hour battery which had not been 'used' for several weeks and was holding before charging, 12.68 volts. A 30w panel is not much use in summer for that and useless in winter. I would say in summer, as an absolute minimum, a 100 watt panel is a base.

You are prob about right,hence i have 200w on roof,not much coming from it now apart from being covered in snow.:White_Thumbs_Down_S

 

[teejay]

Got the Sterling 3amp auxiliary battery charger/maintainer fitted to my leisure battery, which is my primary battery as it is charged by solar or hookup. That's connected to the engine battery so that when it drops below 13.3 v the auxiliary sends charge from leisure to engine battery. Its only a trickle charge but enough to keep things going and as there are no relays to fail in the Sterling, it will last the life of the vehicle. It automatically stops when either the battery is up to 13.3v or hookup/solar disconnected when starting the engine.

Also got a Halfords 8 stage smart charger for deep mid winter non use to keep engine or leisure battery tip top as needed. Does a great job esp on engine side. Only disconnect live terminal-doesn't lose any codes!

 

[keithchesterfield]

I use one of these, cost about £20 a few years ago, to allow the Solar panel to charge up the Leisure batteries and then pass on the charge to the Starter battery.

If there's no Sun I put it on hook up two or three times a week and all the batteries get charged up during the Winter - rest of the year I don't need to hook up - the Solar panel does its job.

Low maintenance for minimal effort and cost - if I wanted work I'd have bought a caravan.