45 watt Photovoltaic Setup for an RV

On June 21, 2008 in photovoltaics

I was asked to put together a setup to keep the batteries on a camper charged without having to plug into the grid or burn fuel.

We found this real nice 45 watt kit on ebay for a good price. Much cheaper than buying three of the 15w panels I have (at $80 each). Plus it comes with two 12v compact fluorescents, a charge controller, and a light duty stand to set the panels up with if you choose.

For this purpose the stand will likely be scrapped and we will set up something more practical for setting up and taking down the kit while camping.

Here is the 45 watt setup with just the charge controller and a 12v compact fluoro:

Just to make sure it worked I hooked up a deep cycle battery that needed to be charged:

I was impressed with the charge controller, as it is much more useful than the standard $10 ebay junk. It has DC outputs for 3v, 5v, 9v, and 12v, as well as a 5v USB connector for charging your camera or mp3 player or whatever technogarbage you feel like hooking up.

The 12v compact fluoros use a 1/4″ headphone/microphone jack to hook up to the charge controller:

and here is the fancy connector for using the various DC outputs

The panels themselves seem to be of good quality, and quite durable. They have an aluminum frame rather than the plastic frame that my 15w panel has.

The wiring is all pretty straightforward as well. Everything has connectors on it already so really all there is to do is hook it up. It is all labeled and everything for you.