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Anybody have one they have used,and can tell me about it!!!

Looking to buy one,but don't know much about them.

Like I said don't know much about them!!!

It's a portable solar power system.
 
Like any power system you first need to define what you want it to do. Are you trying to charge a couple small electronic batteries, a couple deep cycle batteries or run a whole house?

Once you find out how much power you want/need to draw then you will need to decide how much reserve you want. This basically is how many batteries you will need to keep that reserve.

Of course once you figure both of those out then you have to find solar panel(s) that will maintain it all no matter what time of year (assuming you want a year round system).


For me I have a ~30' enclosed trailer that I wanted to be able to run the lights, battery chargers for tools, laptop, cell phone, fans or heater depending on the time of year. When I built mine I put in a 1000w charger/inverter because at the time that was more power then I ever thought I was going to use. I wish I would have put in one large enough to run a toaster oven or similar. Again initially I had a single 12v deep cycle battery since I was just using it a little bit.

I ended up needing to spend lots of time "off grid" with it so I installed twin 6v "renewable energy" for the reserve capacity they have. I then put 2 flexible solar panels that roll out on the roof that put out a total of 200w of power. This easily runs my stuff up to 24 hours without being conservative. Problem was this summer when I was on a fire (one of my jobs) we had several days of inversion (think fogged in but it is smoke) so my panels were making very little power during the day. After a couple days my batteries were very low. I ended up putting 2 more 6v batteries in and have had no problems since.
 
The panels at the time were $125 each. A 15A charger controller runs about $100 but I thought I might need more panels so I bought a 45A controller which really jumped the price at about $400. The batteries run about $150 each.

I bought the 256w kit from, Solar Battery Charging Packages for RV, Boat & Off Grid Apps and as I said I had them put a 45A controller with it.

So I am about $850 for the solar
$600 on batteries
The inverter/charger was $300

Here are some pics and info on the set up, http://www.northwestfirearms.com/off-topic/97184-truck-trailer-solar-pic-finally.html

I will say this set up is totally worth it especially with the way I use this trailer. It is nice to go all "summer" and never have to worry about plugging it in or if your batteries are charged.
 

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