Stand alone solar setup for a pickup bed - Will it work?!

[678876]

Hi - long time lurker, very occasional poster! I would appreciate any input you may have, ive looked about the topics, and yeah. electricity confuses me!

anyway what im planning on doing is fitting a semi flexible panel to the roof of my tonneau cover. much like this one

Biard 150W Watt Semi Flexible Solar Monocrystalline PV Panel

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Flexible-Solar-Monocrystalline-Charging-Motorhome/dp/B00MMEWLSQ

I dont want to connect it into my truck's electrical system as i dont want to cut holes/ invalidate warranties etc etc! Im planning on attaching it to the roof with some heavy duty 3M tape and then wiring it in to a Lithium Ion battery in the truck bed. the one i was looking at was this one

http://www.motoblouz.co.uk/battery-...ku_id=273333&gclid=COqJ8NSp38sCFclsGwodDEAK4A

the logic behind the lithium battery is that i wont need to vent it - i do a lot of truck bed camping

then i believe i need

10A solar panel charge controller / regulator
http://www.amazon.co.uk/charge-cont..._86_img_2?ie=UTF8&refRID=1VDBKCCJ5Y730ZTW4T18


so what im looking to achieve is the ability to run some LED lights for a few hours a night and im planning on connecting in a cigarette lighter style socket so i can charge various mobile devices via a cigarette lighter to usb charger - phones, portable speaker maybe a tablet and to do this regularly for 3 or 4 days at a time pretty much year round.

oh maybe one of those 12v cooler things too and a little fan for when the sun shines!

what im wondering is:

if the panel is taped to the roof... will it have sufficient sunlight to charge the battery? im in central scotland - about the same latitude as Fort McMurray or Edmonton Canada

will this system - assuming the first answer is yes - be an install and forget affair, or will it need some sort of regular maintenance attention?

also did i forget anything?

appreciate any input you may have

 

[JD914]

I'm not an electrical professional but I've done enough research on my own to know that you seem to be asking too much of each component in your proposed system. To charge all those items, AND run lights, AND run a fridge, AND run a fan, you'll need a much larger battery, a higher capacity solar panel and charge controller and a true inverter, rather than a cigarette plug.
There are plenty of threads on this forum to answer this question and I'm sure that much more educated types will follow up below...


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[jonyjoe101]

i agree you also need a bigger battery, the shido battery is only a 4 ah battery. I have LEDs in my van and they use 2 amps to run, the shido will run my lights for less than 2 hours.

in the back of my van where i sleep I have a kinetik khc2000 agm battery (about 102 ah), never had any problems with venting etc and its always charging from a 240 watt solar panel. its a sealed battery. The flooded batteries are the ones that you need to install in its own compartment. They have smaller agm batteries 35 ah 50 ah etc, even a 18 ah agm will be a major improvement over a lithium. The agm's you can leave connected 24/7 without any problems. The lithiums you need to disconnect from the solar when they are full.

150 watts of panel seems right for your power uses, you just need a bigger battery that can store all the power the panel produces during the day. The 120 watt panel I use to have produce 6 amps of power when the sun was overhead, that would charge a shido 4 ah battery in less than a hour, than the power the panel could produce would be wasted.

 

[678876]

Thanks for the response guys.

I checked out the battery you suggested jonyjoe and that looks pretty reasonably priced!

JD914 i hear what youre saying with the over optimistic power drain. I just figured that because they were 12v it wouldnt be too bad.

So if i up the battery to the recommended one, just usd an umpowered cool box then what im proposing should be good?

Im hesitant to add anymore solar panels purely for the reason that theres a chance someone will attempt to steal them!

 

[678876]

12v Cooling Fan | 5 Inch Oscillating Fan with Suction Cup

http://www.roadking.co.uk/12v24v-fans/12v-cooling-car-fan-clip-on-5-inch-oscillating.html

Fan i was looking at was like this one. Probably only need to run it for a couple of hours a night. And thinking about it, in scotland, probably not that often...

 

[plh]

battery is too small amp hour rating. Maybe can get a few cell phone recharges out of it. Not much better than an 8 cell power bank.

 

[AndrewP]

You have a couple of problems you will need to address. At your latitude, the solar power density is low, and so having your panel flat on the roof is going to limit your already limited capacity severely. I'd come up with a method that allows you to aim your panel at the sun. Plug in your numbers in a solar calculator and you'll see why it's particularly important for you. I like the free app "solar tilt" which is clunky but automates setting the angle properly.

If that battery is really <3 amp hours, it is ridiculously too small. Almost 2 orders of magnitude too small. Like don't bother too small. You need more like 100 amp hours. I'd recommend an AGM battery and not worry further. Lead/Acid = Mature technology, Lithium Batteries, especially cheap ones, are still growing up. Give them another 5 years or so. Most Li batteries have more specialized charging needs, so make sure your charge controller matches those needs.

Get a better charge controller. I am not an MPPT only guy, but you are looking a a cheapy PWM. At least get a Morningstar SunSaver10. Not much more money but extremely well made/proven.

Not hooking up to your alternator in a climate where it is cloudy and rainy a good portion of the time virtually guarantees your house battery will be dead when you need it. Find a way to fit a couple of 2 gauge wires and an underhood VSR and at least you will always arrive on site with a full house battery.

I'm not really sure how successful a solar set up will be so far north but good luck.