An Idiot Wonders About Solar

[Zaq]

Ill be the first to tell you, I am a complete idiot when it comes to any and all electrical things. I graduated college with a degree in automotive, and cant tell you left from right when it comes to watts, volts, amps, etc. (Guess thats why i became a body man)

I have a basic question, that I couldnt seem to find searching around all the other solar panel threads, maybe I missed it.

Anyways,
So, I am planning on getting a fridge (Dometic 65) to run on trips. I used my bosses last year (ARB50) on a two week trip, had a brand new battery in the truck. Everything was just fine the whole trip. Well, now once I get my own fridge, and have more trips planned, I was thinking about grabbing some sort of solar panel trickle charger or something to throw on the battery while parked at camp. I have a new AGM battery. Now, i know alot of you have full blown solar setups with huge panels and different controllers, going into your dual battery setups, and all that fancy stuff. But, for someone who isnt looking to get a loan out just for an auxiliary battery setup, would a simple trickle charger style solar panel be okay?

Im just looking for something to plug in at camp, to help keep peace of mind really, with keeping the battery topped off. The trips I do, Im moving everyday, driving alot. But, again, its more of a piece of mind thing I guess. Looks like there are some cheaper trickle charge solar panels online. Any recommendations? Do i need some sort of meter or something to make sure it doesnt overcharge it? Yeah, serious mental blockage for me when it comes to this stuff.

Laman terms please, this one is slightly stoopid.

THANKS!!!!

 

[Longshot270]

Here's my take, anything is better than nothing. If you find that the truck won't crank then unplug the fridge, turn everything off and wait a day or two while the trickle charge solar panel does its thing.

The 6 watt Coleman solar panel I use to help my little bait aerator/phone charger battery puts out 0.4 amps at 15 volts. Multiply 0.4 and 15 to get 6 watts. It helps but it isn't going to be close to breaking even under the best conditions for charging multiple cell phones, much less a fridge. We use them to maintain the batteries in farm equipment and automatic gate openers and they work well for that.

 

[Flipper]

Basically a small panel would be a waste of money. Just take Longshots example. I am sure being a mechanic you have battery chargers at work. They are probably 10 or 20 Amp chargers that means with his .4 A panel it would take 25 times longer as a 10 A charger. Look at it as time in to time out . You are going to see a term amp hours this is usually at 25 amps so lets say your battery is rated at 100 minutes run time drawing 25 amps so a 25 amp charger would take 100 mimutes to put the “time” back in the battery. Now lets say your charger was half that size a 12 1/2 amp charger now it would take 200 minutes to put the “time” back in the battery. 6A....400 minutes. 3A......800 minutes. 1.5A.......1600 minutes and so on down the line. The other direction it would only take a 50A charger 50 minutes to put the time back in.
The small amp panels are designed to keep a battery topped off not really to charge a truck battery.
So if you ran your start battery down to the point where it wouldnt start your truck it would probaby take 3-5 days to bring up the voltage up to the level to start the truck.
A easy way to look at electricity is to relate it to water
Amp is current just like in a river the faster the water flows the stronger or higher the current
Volts is pressure just like a nozzle on your garden hose compaired to a fire hose
Resistance is just like a dam across a river the higher the dam the more resistance
Capacitance is like a water tank that stores the water or electricity sort of like a short term battery
Positive is like a spring that supplies the water that would run through the system
Negative is like the drain where the water would go after you are finished with it.

Hope this helps, class dismissed, any questions give me shout I will be glad to help.