130 watt portable solar

[louaxtjr]

Had an opportunity to try out Off The Grid Rv Solar's 130 watt system on a 4 day stay with no hookups. Previous solar experience was limited to a 1500mW panel with controller on our old SOB.

I must say, I am impressed. In spite of running the furnace each night, the solar panels kept up with demand on the batteries during the day quite handily.

I turned the panels twice over the course of the day ( total of 3 positions ) to maximize exposure, and we had sunny weather 3 of 4 days. Each day the controller dropped out before the afternoon was over, between 2 and 3 pm.

I should also mention that we have a small ( 750 watt ) inverter and LED's throughout. The other consumers were chargers for the cell phones, laptops, a cell repeater/amplifier, and a wifiranger. In addition, we ran a fan off the inverter for a few hours each afternoon, mostly to tax the system a bit.

In addition, I found one of our 2 batteries to be somewhat lacking, so I will report again when it is replaced. This only became apparent when I returned home.

My apologies for only "seat-of-the-pants" impression. I will bring my multimeter next time to offer some data. If I'd had that with me, I'd have known the 2nd battery was not taking a charge.

[OfftheGridRV]

I am glad everything worked out well for you. As for the battery issue, are you using the ring terminal adapter across the battery bank to charge? This is the only way to keep the bank charged evenly. It will not charge one and then the other when it gets full.

[louaxtjr]

Matt,

Yes, I had the 2 batteries connected correctly across the bank of 2 but was surprised that they were not discharging evenly. Once I investigated I found a bad cell in one battery. This battery was older than the other, so I'll be replacing it.

Lou