Do you already have solar panel(s) & a leisure battery on your van?Hi,
Is there such as a thing as a solar panel charger do I can charge through the cig lighter or obd port? No access to electric
It might still make enough to stop the plates in the battery furring up?I have the Ecoworthy 10W.
Facing South, but shaded after pm. Only any good from April-September, after that it gives nothing useful.
Doubt it, it won't keep mine above 12v in winter, but I do have a tracker.It might still make enough to stop the plates in the battery furring up?
Hi, yes I do have solar panels on my van.Do you already have solar panel(s) & a leisure battery on your van?
In that case I'd fit a battery maintainer like an Ablemail AMT12. A search will give you all the info you need. @Dellmassive has written a comprehensive "How to" on the subject.Hi, yes I do have solar panels on my van.
Thank youSecond the AMT-12 if you already have solar fitted on the leisure side.
For direct maintenance I believe 50mA is the threshold for a fault code for the van's ECUs drawing too much current when fully asleep, so using that as a worst case that's potentially 1.2Ah (24 x 0.05) of capacity from the battery over a day.
In watt hours that's 1.2 x 12 so near enough 15wh
So your solar panel needs to be able to replace that at the same rate. As a rough assumption assume you get a good rate for a quarter of the day (6 hours charging, 18 not charging) then you need 15 x 4 = 60w
So the 10/20w panels are likely to fall short.
For reference a normal 5mm LED will generally run at about 20mA - so the load use in the calculation is about 3 LEDs - not that much.
The AMT is easy to fit (must be if I did it) and keeps my starter battery at 12.3V permanently, no starter battery anxiety any more.Thank you