Solar panel suggestions

Hey guys. I have a 20 foot glacier fish house that I’m wanting to install a solar panel to get a lil longer time without running generator,. I know no solar panel will eliminate the need for a generator, but just curious what other people have installed? Size,brand, etc and how it’s working for them… mostly just run the furnace and a few lights, I fire up generator to watch TV so not to interested in doing an inverter, just want furnace to be able to run a lil longer when unattended thank you!!!

Well how often to you watch tv? Is it really worth having to deal with panels if your gonna run your generator anyway?

I don’t have any panels but I do have and inverter and 2 batteries. I only need to run the generator for a hour or 2 in the morning and the same at night before bed. It’s nice having a inverter to be able to watch tv and charge phones without having to run the generator during the day.

Not very often at all, I set my house up on a near by lake and pretty much leave it for weeks before moving it then sit there for weeks, and I go out every day after work and fish a few hours , and I leave my heat on all winter, problem is if it’s really really cold the battery is dead (from the furnace running) the next day I get there , or if I miss a night and don’t go out, I run my generator every night I’m out there but I want the battery to last till then

I don’t have an answer but have been doing some research about what to try adding to my cabin. The issue you’ll have is that the fan in heaters uses a lot of power. A 100W panel will optimally output a bit over 5 amps. Your heater fan probably uses about 5 amps when it’s running so the first thing is to estimate how long it runs in a day.

In the winter with the panel mounted flat on the roof you might never get optimal sun. Mounted on the side and parked with that side facing south will probably be better since the sun is low and sun will reflect off the snow.

If your heater fan runs for 10 minutes per hour for 24 hours and draws 5 amps you take 20AH out of your battery. 15 minutes per hour you are taking out 30AH. If your panel, not getting optimum sun, averages 2 amps for 8 hours a day you are only putting 16AH back in. This is the part though that I don’t know how to accurately estimate what you are actually going to get out of your panel. I think you will definitely extend your run time between needing to charge off generator but I don’t know how much. Maybe a manufacturer like Renogy could give more accurate estimations here.

You can have enough solar panel that you don’t need to run a generator. But only if the sun shines. Here is my setup on my new skid house. Two 215 watt poly panels. A 40 amp Renogy Rover solar controller. The controller can handle 520 watts if your battery bank is 12v. If your battery bank is 24v you can double that. I don’t run a 120v inverter so my house is run only on 12v. 12v LED lights, 12v 32″ TV, Direct TV system, 12v 17″ monitor for fish cam and 3 12v computer fans. I also a 40 amp RV converter so if I do hook up the generator it will run everything and charge my batteries too. The best part is I don’t have to bring my batteries home each week. They are fully charged when I return to my house the next weekend.
When there is sun the solar charger will put out close to 30 amps. If there is sun, I can watch fishing shows on the TV and run the fish cam, the battery bank can be fully charged back up before noon. If I’m fully charged at sunset my batteries will only rundown to about 12.3 volts before I go the sleep. Plenty of power to start everything up in the morning.

Attachments:

1. 

   IMG_20210116_094302.jpg
   

2. 

   IMG_20200202_104915.jpg
   

3. 

   IMG_20200202_104928.jpg
   

4. 

   IMG_20210124_120307.jpg
   

gizmoguy wrote:

When there is sun the solar charger will put out close to 30 amps.

You made me realize my numbers are wrong in my post. I forgot that the panels output more than 12v. A 100W panel that outputs 5.3a is doing it at 18.6v so it’s more like 8a to the battery after the charge controller. I think that’s right…

@gizmoguy: what are you running off the load output of your charge controller? Have you found the BT-1 useful? I was also wondering if you’ve compared having the panels flat vs tilted and how much difference does it make.

I think your problem is running your furnace for a day or 2 off the batteries. Simplest thing would be to get bigger batteries. On my camper, we went to 2 6V golf cart batteries, and wired them in series to get 12V. This has more amp-hours than 2 12V deep cycle batteries, and will take the extreme cycling even better than a deep cycle marine/RV battery. You will need to buy taller battery boxes, but it is still less work than solar. We can boondock several days with this setup.